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St. Cloud State University
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Commentary
College: hazardous to your health?
By Kristen Kubisiak
Published:
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Kristen J. Kubisiak -- Staff Essay
College is a lot like a suitcase.
When students first start college, they have to take general education credits. These are like the necessary items one might take on a trip: underwear, socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste.
Then students have their major credits. These are the everyday clothes a traveler would pack to wear on a trip. The minor credits students take are the extra, "just-in-case" items, like an umbrella or the nice outfit a wayfarer might bring along on a trip "just in case" one might go out to a fancy dinner.
If these were all the items one wanted to bring on a trip, it would be easy to close the suitcase after it had been packed. It would be similarly easy for students to fit all of their credits into one four-year package if that was all they wanted to bring along on their trip.
The flaw with the four-year suitcase is its inability to accommodate all of the opportunities college has to offer, like the journeyer's suitcase is often unable to accommodate all of the extra personal affects one might like to include on his or her travels.
Students may try to study hard, but just as important as studying is involvement in on campus organizations, choirs, sports teams, charities, residence halls, speakers, cultural nights, plays, or clubs.
Additionally important to students are jobs, to help fund their college education, their cars and their social activities.
In order to graduate from SCSU, students are required to have 120 credits. Since there are eight semesters in four years (assuming no summer classes are taken) a student could theoretically complete a bachelors degree by taking 15 credits each semester.
Doesn't sound too bad. That's approximately 12-15 hours of class a week.
If the student was then to study an hour outside of class for every hour of class time, as is often recommended, that is an additional 10-15 hours just spent on studying and homework.
If a student also tries to have a part time job at $6/hr, to make it worthwhile they'd have to work at least 10-20 hours a week, although many student work more than this and are paid less.
Now, one must factor in the extracurricular activities: sports, clubs, and student organizations. There's another 10-15 hours a week, probably more.
Volunteering also requires 5-10 per hours a week. After all of this a student has spent anywhere from 45-65 hours of the week on these activities. After including the recommended eight hours of sleep per nights, all the time a student has left out of a 168 hour week for socializing, spending time with family or getting any exercise is between 47-67 hours.
So it can be done. Just as a lot of clothing CAN be stuffed awkwardly into a small suitcase until it fits. But that doesn't mean the fit is comfortable.
The four-year package also doesn't often take into account quality versus quantity. Students can take all those classes and be involved in all those activities but are in many cases forced to make a "quality" decision. �
The quality of a student's work or contribution to class, or activities cannot be at its highest level when students are spreading themselves so thin.
Sacrifices must be made.
Students find themselves cutting class one day to make up for studying till 4 a.m. the previous night. Poor performance in athletic activities follows nights of stress-ridden sleep.
Students may even come to resent activities they once enjoyed as a result of the pressure they feel to conform to the four-year scheme someone (who is probably dead) designed for them.
In short, college is no place for perfectionists, and it might be time to take a few lessons from the "super seniors" who realized the old suitcase wasn't working, and got one that did.
