Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

This video says it all!!! I have not had a class with over 100 students in a while, but when I had those classes I was lost in the crowd. The teacher cannot focus on you because, not only does he or she have your 100+ class, he or she also has two or three other classes the same size. The same can be said about elementary and secondary schools. A few of my classes in high school had so many students, that we had to borrow desks from neighboring classrooms. In high school, almost all of the teachers knew my name but that was on a smaller scale compared to college. At Auburn, none of my teachers knew my name except when I began taking my methods classes because I saw the same teachers for two years!!! Those classes were not large so it was easier to remember our names.

I have had plenty of classes where a classmate has been on roll the entire semester but never showed up; not for tests, mandatory classes or anything!!! That is money wasted because the student never showed up to class. That is one less student the teacher has to worry about and one less student hindering the teacher from remembering my name. Now for those who do show up, you have the few who have their laptops with them. Nine times out of ten, what is on the screen of their laptop is not related to what we are doing in class. The most famous thing to do when in class and you have your laptop is to search FACEBOOK!!! Just this past Saturday in my Health class, one of my fellow classmates spent his time on facebook while the professor was going over a chapter.

The section that really spoke to me was how a day in the life of a college student is spent and how many hours our day consists of. I am lucky if I get 7 hours of sleep each night because I have a 3 month old at home:) Things have not really peaked here at USA for me but when I was at Auburn I really thought that I had invented my own perception of time. There were not enough hours in the day for what I had to do. The icing on the cake is that when I graduate, with huge bags under my eyes, I am going to be in debt!!! I worked my tail off to be in debt. Really?!

Now to make this video really capture my overall college experience, I would add a Black student surrounded by White students but with empty seats around the Black student. Racism still exists and I have been treated like I was not even in the classroom by classmates. This is a major issue I faced in two or three classes while in college. I chose to go to a school with students who did not resemble me for a reason. I had gone to high school and middle school with Black students and thought that by going to a college with a low number of Black students compared to White students I would have a broader experience. But in doing so, I was treated like I did not exist.