College sure isn't what I remember

[Aloha_Shooter]

When I went to college, dorms were ... dorms, not hotel rooms. If you wanted to exercise, you could go to the gym for free weights or run on the street ala "Rocky" (which had its own inspiration given this was Philadelphia in the mid-80s) instead of climbing walls and spas.

To help kids handle the pressure of exams, they had "Primal Scream Night" a couple days before the first exams where kids had a half hour to let loose with their frustrations. Apparently today's kids need a whole lot more: http://heatst.com/culture-wars/minia...l-exam-stress/

I hope to God taxpayer grants and funds aren't being used for this crap. Therapy dogs? Therapy horses? Coloring books and play dough? Seriously? Don't even get me started on the scratch-and-sniff bookmarks, zen gardens, or stuffed animals. WTF? Have we become an entire nation of pajama boys? Wait, don't answer that, Obama won re-election in 2012, of course we have.

I just got back from a vacation in New Zealand. College kids there in 2011 got to go help dig out Christchurch. I mean, really dig out -- even today the center of the city looks like a mixture of a war zone and modern city with whole blocks razed to the ground and new structures in various stages of rebuilding. They had a mini-army raised from college and high school students who just went to work at recovering from REAL stress. This year, they're going to get to go help dig out Kaikoura while American college kids make pretzel wands and build Hogwarts from Legos.

[Irving]

Is therre anything that is not different today than it was in our youth?

[MrPrena]

No offense, but students thesedays are living an easy academic life.

They rely more on matcad, and pc more than before. Prerequisite for majors are much weaker than when I was a student in under and grad courses.

Only thing I feel real bad is the tuition.

[MarkCO]

The current administration is working to figure out how to forgive 108B in student loans to dump on us, the taxpayers, so yes, there is a chance you are paying for all that tomfluffery.

[Rumline]

Re: relying on PCs and Mathcad, if I'm paying [not cheap amounts of money] for a college degree, I would expect to learn higher-level thought processes than how to manually calculate something a computer can do in 0.1 seconds. In the real world, nobody gives a **** if you can manually compute a Fourier transform.

[Fmedges]

I agree that most people are quite soft these days however when it comes to academics I believe today is much harder. When I was in high school due to the lack of the internet being as widespread as it is now, research papers and really most things were much easier in my
opinion. Now in the internet age the requirement for research in some classes are quite unrealistic.

[BushMasterBoy]

When I went to college, we marched in the snow to classes. Denver gets really cold at midnight in the winter.

[.455_Hunter]

When I was in school (mid to late '90s), the shooting club would host the "Dead Day Range Trip" before finals each semester. We would pay the range fees at either Cherry Creek or Mile High in Erie (now houses), buy some ammo, and let students shoot various personal and school owned firearms. Good times!

[tmckay2]

I agree that most people are quite soft these days however when it comes to academics I believe today is much harder. When I was in high school due to the lack of the internet being as widespread as it is now, research papers and really most things were much easier in my
opinion. Now in the internet age the requirement for research in some classes are quite unrealistic.

Agreed. I've only been out less than a decade but while I do believe students and people in general are being brought up as emotionally weak, the shear amount of knowledge being taken in is actually more than before, it's just made easier via technology. They also focus on being a little more well rounded than in the past, and while I think that's all a waste of time, the fact is you have to cram knowledge in there that you'll never even use.

The interesting thing I see as someone who hires people is that since nearly everyone gets a degree these days, it's not the academics that set people apart, it's the social skills and how much you are involved with outside of school that separates the cream of the crop. I see a lot of great students get denied jobs because they lack good social skills. I don't think that was as much of a concern a few decades ago.

[funkymonkey1111]

i took a cross country ski lesson yesterday at snow mountain ranch. the instructors were the cross country coaches from the University of Wyoming. In splitting the group up, the coach asked for those of us that "identified" as beginners to stand here, and those of us that "identified" as an intermediate to stand there.

That's college-speak for you. There's no shame involved in calling yourself a beginning cross country skier. or, that you have skied and wanted some more advanced tips. either you're a beginner, or you're not. There's no "identification" of this fact. what's next, if you're a beginner, but "identify" as a world class skier, they'll tailor a lesson to you?