the New Breed of College Student

I teach college level anatomy and physiology courses and have recently noticed a radical shift in the attitude of my students. Note, most of my students are moving into pre-med and pre-nursing programs in order to work in the medical field. Needless to say, most of us would prefer to have competent people taking care of us.

Lesson number one of anatomy: Anatomy is hard.

Not like it's difficult to grasp-- anatomy isn't nuclear physics. It's hard in the way that learning to read was hard. That learning to write was hard! (though, judging from my students' handwriting and rudimentary grasp of the English language, that lesson wasn't quite learned)  Do you remember way back in 1st grade when you spent an entire morning writing row after row of the letter G? Or struggling through your first reading assignments? Probably not, but I'll remind you. IT WAS HARD!!! This is the kind of hard that anatomy is; you're basically memorizing a new language plus recognizing structures, vessels, nerves, functions, etc.

Now people all over the country, all over the world even, go through this course and come out the other end all the smarter for doing it. Somehow, somewhere my students have forgotten (or failed to learn?) how to study. They are the most entitled generation of students I've ever seen. I warn my students each and every week that they should be reviewing past material and studying new material every day if they wish to get an A or B in the class. The first exam average was around a 65%.

My A students are no big deal. These students will get an A come hell or high water regardless of the challenge. The rest, however, are up in arms that I would have the audacity NOT to pass them by giving them all extra credit. I wish you could have seen their faces when I told them I would rather my doctors and nurses get where they are based on knowledge and would not be passing people out of the kindness of my heart.

I don't teach high school, but I sympathize with the challenges that those teachers face in the classroom and also from the powers that be. That being said, I'm wondering if our society has reached the point of giving credit for education when nothing has been learned just for the sake of pushing people through. The other day I had to stop class to teach my students how to use an index rather than flip through their books page by page. I have students who come to my office to argue for half an hour over a point on an exam or quiz while standing next to my A students, who are actively studying for the next exam. They don't seem to realize that they could have gotten 5 or 10 more points on their next exam if they had just studied for that half an hour instead of argue with me for partial credit on a wrong answer.

It's sometimes absurd to the point of being comical. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that this isn't a practical joke, this is my new breed of college student. So what is the solution? Do we maintain the bar of success and turn out a handful of well qualified people while flunking the rest? Or do we lower the bar to include everyone we possibly can in the joy of getting a degree (and not always an education)? It's a real dilemma for me. I take teaching very seriously. I don't dock points for technicalities, I accommodate working students and athletes to give them every opportunity to succeed, and I hold far more office hours than I am required by my institution. You can lead a student to school, but you can't make them learn.

This disconnect between me and my students is worrying and frustrating. I simply cannot find a way to inspire my students to succeed. They will perform absurd tasks for extra credit, but they will not apply themselves to studying in order to get additional points on an exam. It makes me feel like a failure of a teacher. My top students are all wondering why I'm trying so hard when they are clearly succeeding and the failing students are wonder why I'm trying so hard when they think they should pass regardless of their performance.

Funny, though. I may not have to worry about this for too much longer as it's my job on the line this coming election.

the High Sierras

The view was phenomenal and if I could have heard anything over the pounding of my blood in my ears I would have been overwhelmed with the silence. There is something about the High Sierras that has never translated well to me by photographs. I have always been unimpressed with the snowy, rocky, treeless vistas that people seem to blather on about but figured you had to experience it in person at high altitude to appreciate it.

I would have continued to drool over my surroundings, but the snow had begun to melt into my clothing and I needed to make some attempt to right myself from my face-down, spread eagle position. This is when I realized that my left knee was jammed between two boulders and my right nipple felt like I had just gotten a surprise piercing by one of those enormous kindergarten sized pencils. I've never fallen face-down while backpacking before and I have to say it was a curious experience. My pack wasn't very heavy while I was walking upright, but it managed to push me gently toward the slippery boulder and sit on my back like a friendly paperweight. A backpacker-weight.

The entire route up to 11,500 feet had been brutal even though relatively short. My right knee apparently hadn't bothered to repair itself completely after a sprain/ligament strain sometime in August and decided that 3 miles into this hike was the proper time to alert me to its condition. However, the fates decided that I should bury my good knee in a snowy boulder pile to even me out.

We were nearly at Muriel Lake, so I limped along with both sets of trekking poles while glaring at my 17-pound mutt who had hitched a ride in my friend Dave's arms. The Sierras made up for screwing with my knee by putting on a 20 minute sunset show which basically turned Muriel into an infinity pool below our tent. I'm not a great photographer, but it was impossible to take a bad picture of this sunset. The temperature dropped into the 20's just after the sunset ended and it was into our down sleeping bags for everyone!

For those of you who have not had to share a fully-zipped mummy bag with a dog, I suggest you wait for this experience until the temperature drops well below comfortable. That being said, I am so glad Zoe was snuggled into my stomach because I'm halfway convinced I would have frozen to death otherwise. Plus, the comedic value of watching my sleeping bag vomit her out the face-hole every morning was a great way to start the day.

I was attached to the campsite for the duration of the trip, thanks to my knees, but enjoyed myself immensely. The fishing, while not incredible, was entertaining and the lake yielded surprisingly large trout for the altitude and water temperature. The cool thing about this area is that some of the lakes were stocked with native brown trout in order to preserve the genetic lineage. These lakes are difficult to access, making them some of the last remaining "pristine" brown trout habitats.

Dave and I didn't have any trouble with wildlife, but made sure to use our bear canister and hang whatever other smelly things using the PCT method. Of course, any trees at our altitude are woefully short and I'm sure if a bear did happen by it would have viewed our bag as a giant cupcake dangling at eye level. We heard plenty of coyotes and saw so many tracks thanks to the snow. Some of them belonged to my dog, but we soon learned to tell the difference.

The hike back was bittersweet. The views literally didn't stop until we were halfway back home in the car, my knees behaved themselves admirably the entire trek back, and I couldn't wait to sleep on a mattress that wasn't the texture and temperature of the frozen ground below it, but all the same it was difficult to leave. In just a matter of hours I had gone from my mountain ringed Sierra infinity pool to a traffic jam miles deep on the 405. Sigh! I guess that makes these trips all the sweeter!