2008 Woodie Awards
Born since Lincoln was elected
Deborah Chessey
Issue date: 9/19/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
I attend class at the Idaho Falls Campus, and we are absolutely crawling with non-traditional students. The definition of non-traditional student is rather broad and includes everything from being financially independent to being older than gravity. According to my sources, every student on the Idaho Falls campus is a non-trad, but for the sake of my article I am going to focus on non-trad students who mark "other" in the age box.
Our age range is pretty vast, what we have in common is that we did not graduate from High School and then jump into college. We took off a year (or forty) before deciding that a college education was the ticket.
We take night classes because we work during the day. We have baby pictures in our wallet. We have gray hair and wrinkles and some of us wear sweater sets. Because we are old(er) we are an anomaly in a class room. Most of the time our age isn't an issue, but sometimes it is brought to our attention.
Some professor seem to forget that the class room is populated with older folk and these professor have a habit of saying things such as, "You learned this in grade school" and they aren't taking into consideration that some of us couldn't pay attention during grade school because we were bedazzled by that new fangled contraption: color television. When professor's reference things that our High School science teacher taught us, they might not consider that some of us were in high school before the metric system was invented.
There are also wonderful professors that acknowledge that many of us have had children and careers since high school and they prepare their lectures as if they are talking to adults who need to learn something. They don't assume that we understand the mathematical equation "pi" and they do not give the information as if they are talking to people who rode the short bus to school.
Every semester I develop an academic crush on a professor who has the ability to present material to us without using comments such as, "You covered this in the seventh grade." I admire these professor's and look forward to their lectures. They are enlightened souls who present information that we have already learned in a manner that makes it fresh and new.
Come to think of it, I am sure that the traditional students appreciate the professors who don't assume we learned something in grade school, after all, we were all born since Lincoln was president.
Our age range is pretty vast, what we have in common is that we did not graduate from High School and then jump into college. We took off a year (or forty) before deciding that a college education was the ticket.
We take night classes because we work during the day. We have baby pictures in our wallet. We have gray hair and wrinkles and some of us wear sweater sets. Because we are old(er) we are an anomaly in a class room. Most of the time our age isn't an issue, but sometimes it is brought to our attention.
Some professor seem to forget that the class room is populated with older folk and these professor have a habit of saying things such as, "You learned this in grade school" and they aren't taking into consideration that some of us couldn't pay attention during grade school because we were bedazzled by that new fangled contraption: color television. When professor's reference things that our High School science teacher taught us, they might not consider that some of us were in high school before the metric system was invented.
There are also wonderful professors that acknowledge that many of us have had children and careers since high school and they prepare their lectures as if they are talking to adults who need to learn something. They don't assume that we understand the mathematical equation "pi" and they do not give the information as if they are talking to people who rode the short bus to school.
Every semester I develop an academic crush on a professor who has the ability to present material to us without using comments such as, "You covered this in the seventh grade." I admire these professor's and look forward to their lectures. They are enlightened souls who present information that we have already learned in a manner that makes it fresh and new.
Come to think of it, I am sure that the traditional students appreciate the professors who don't assume we learned something in grade school, after all, we were all born since Lincoln was president.
Be the first to comment on this story