Thursday, November 09, 2006

Bewildering Unpreparedness

What does it say for the current state of higher education when students arrive for class with absolutely nothing but themselves, their jackets, and their cell phones? At least, I'd assume they had a cell phone in a pocket somewhere - they can't seem to go anywhere without that.

No bookbag, no textbooks, no notebooks, no folders, no pieces of paper.

Not even a pen or pencil.

6 comments:

Jeff said...

Kids these days, huh?

Oddly, I arrive to class with only my textbook and a notebook, and I am chided by some for "taking nothing to class." In law school you are apparently unprepared without your laptop.

reyn said...

Nothing but a bunch of damn punk kids.

Man, I had all sorts of crap I hauled to class, and I was hiking 20 or 30 minutes to get there, too. Lazy unprepared bastards.

Elizabeth said...

*grins* I think I can remember a few Legal Research and Writing classes where I showed up only with myself as well. It was a strangely peaceful experience - almost zen-like in quality. I knew I couldn't take notes, so I didn't pay attention at all. Simply let my mind float through a blue oblivion of law school daze...

reyn - Uphill both ways, right?

Kate said...

nye! - yes, kids these days (why do i feel so old??). you seem quite prepared to me - laptop? pshaw! :)

reyn - and in 4 feet of snow while barefoot because your broke student self couldn't afford shoes?

elizabeth - i'm ashamed of you! :P i feel your poor professors pain... :)

Anonymous said...

Not having one myself, I sometimes wonder about cell phones. Perhaps nowadays (as I am so old), a cell phone is enough to take to class.

I hear that kids can text quickly, so maybe that can type fast enough on their keypads to take notes during class. And I don't know if cell phones offers such a feature, but if you could save those notes to some text file on the phone itself, then that really might be all they need for class.

And of course the best feature of all would be some audio read-back deal, where your student in the car could have his phone read that text file to him while driving, thus studying on the way to school - being slightly less of a death threat to his friendly neighborhood librarian.

Ah, technology.

Kate said...

stacy - i feel your pain. :)

herzogbr - if only they would use their cell phones in those ways. sadly, they seem to prefer other not-so-academic uses.