Commentary Sometimes Taking a Back Seat May Be Best Choice By Spencer Patton (December 18, 2003)

I was visiting a college and the tour included a talk with a current student so that we could get an idea of what the students thought of the college. I do not think that this student knew a thing about life on the campus. He was so wrapped up in his own accomplishments that he talked for half an hour without telling us anything about the college except that he was the president of half of the clubs and organizations, and that he was elected to some student council position. I think he must have been too busy running from one task to another to notice what was going on around him. Not only did he not know what was going on around the campus, but he also did not say much about what was going on in the clubs that he led. He did not seem interested in what the clubs actually did, but rather how they were run, and how he could become their president. He gave me the impression that his only reason for attending college was so that he could look good to potential employers, not to learn, not to have fun, and not to become better prepared to face the world. 

Challenging classes with outside assessments also seem to encourage working hard for something that hardly matters. Students will take the hardest classes that the school offers, in subjects that do not even interest them; just so that they can get a diploma that says they passed some challenging tests. Then what good is the diploma? By the time the student gets the diploma they are already accepted into college, and by the time they are applying for a job and they have their college diploma, the high school diploma will not make much of a difference to employers. It is comparable to applying for college with a 4.0 GPA from high school and then pointing out that back in middle school the student got and A+ in eighth grade english. The colleges do not care about that, it is the student’s recent accomplishments that they are interested in. 

Students also tend to be more genuinely interested in the subject when they learn what they want at their own pace, but the outside assessments force them to learn what the test is on in less time than the student would have if it were a normal class. This makes the teachers less happy that they cannot spend time on the parts of the subject that interest them most, and because of this the students pick up less of the teacher’s enthusiasm for the subject. Having less time increases the students’ stress and reduces the amount of information that they retain, so it hardly seems worth it to work extra hard for this. 

Many people also do community service, not because they want to help the community, but because they have to do it for NHS or a scholarship. It seems that people should get some satisfaction from helping the community, and should do community service because of that. When people do something because they have to, they tend to resent it and the experience is dampened. 

People seem to think that it is not acceptable to take a back seat and just enjoy what is going on, or take a class and learn something because it interests them. It seems that too many people are trying to do more than they can enjoy. Sometimes relaxation and letting someone else plan is the best way to better one’s self.