You know what Mono? Almost NONE of these fresh-out-of-high-school kids are actually paying for their own education. The ones who do pay, or have loans, pay attention in class and take classes during winter and summer breaks because they can’t afford extra semesters. The rest of the kids have their parents to answer to and that doesn’t scare them.

The sense of entitlement in so many 18-22 year olds is immense and that is obnoxious. The people I sit next to in class who text the whole time are failing the classes. Obviously that’s not everyone but it seems like they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. One psychological theory is that they were praised too often for doing nothing and never disciplined by their parents and teachers, so they don’t know how to compromise.

I feel incredibly bad for the professors because they are not boring or ineffectual. They don’t deserve to be disrespected at their job or held back because people were too entitled to listen and made them repeat themselves 7 times. They don’t deserve to have to fail kids who don’t pay attention. That affects their job ratings and tenure. They DO need to learn how to handle that disrespect by keeping up, like the person who commented about her “phone or bits” setup.

I had one prof. who was very clear that if you were caught texting, on the internet, or talking to a friend more than once you would fail the class. At first I was kind of offended that he was treating us like children, but it was a huge class and most of his students were freshmen, and it worked. It’s the ONLY class I’ve sat through where no one dared touch their phone or whatever during class. Everyone LOVED the class and the professor. I don’t know why more professors don’t do that. Treating some college students like adults doesn’t seem to work and it effects everyone who is being responsible.

Also, if it were your money and you wanted to completely ignore the lecture, that’s kind of dysfunctional and self-defeating. Is it THAT hard to take a bathroom break to send an important text or to just wait until class is over? They’re less than 2 hours and the ones that aren’t have breaks in the middle. I hear constant buzzing during class from peoples’ text conversations and I just think it makes them look ignorant and arrogant. It’s NOT a lot to ask students to turn off their cell phones or iPods. It’s on the syllabus for every prof., but they don’t enforce it.

I hope that this will be something they mature out of. I didn’t start thinking as an adult until I was about 23. I thought I was fully cognitive but I wasn’t and maybe I was more obnoxious than I remember. A lot of adolescents (I’m talking through the early 20s) don’t know that they don’t know most everything already. It must be really difficult to keep them in line when they feel like they’re already adults. Since this is new territory, we have no idea if they will be more respectful as adults, so it’s worrying. “Kids today” aside, society could end up just fine. But damn it’s annoying to people who existed before the cell phone.

Rant over, but this has been bugging me since I got back to school and I was given a reason to vent. I mean, they work for you so you can completely degrade them? Awesome logic.

never let an asshole use your computer!

I’m just sayin, if you went to a movie and fell asleep, no one’s gonna come by and be like “Hey! Wake up! We’re trying to entertain you!”. Why? Because you paid already, that’s why… and not paying attention does not warrant a refund.