Flashback: Am I in highschool?…
I’ve been interviewing students for a story I’m currently writing about the sensibility of having a major in liberal arts. Of course that’s it in a nutshell…but I felt like I must vent about something that came up in almost all the interviews I had with Columbia students which is the quality of the education they’re getting. The general education classes (for the most part) were described as dull, not challenging in the slightest and are an insult to most student’s intelligence.
I would have to say I agree with such statements. When I took an Introduction to Literature class to get a gen. ed. out of the way… at best I thought I was in my sophomore year of high school again. We went over how to write a theme paper for crying out loud! I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve analyzed Romeo and Juliet…I realize it’s an intro class but I expected it to be at least at a college level…we even went around the room like it was story time reading poems and short stories aloud to pass the time. It was like kindergarten minus snack and nap time. Turning things in on time was optional too. Although this seems like a great class to take for an easy A, I don’t want to have to suffer through the semester knowing that I actually paid to take a course that could have possibly made me lose some valuable brain cells.
