Jonathan was the first to notice this article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed that is very indicative of how we infantilize students. He blogged about it here. In his post, Jonathan looked at the article from the perspective of a professor. Now I would like to consider it from the viewpoint of a student.

Imagine that the day you begin to attend college, you are subjected to the following procedures:

The first day students enter college, many are in the throes of a developmental crisis. They should be assessed in several areas, including their academic ability, social skills, study skills, vocabulary, general knowledge, work history, and community involvement. The results of these assessments would be used to identify the types of support they will need to succeed. This data and interviews with the student can lead to a learning contract between the student and the institution. Participation should be voluntary, but students who opt out would be required to sign a waiver stating they were informed about any concerns and offered appropriate services. This individualized approach would bolster many students and increase their chances for academic success.

I don’t know if I was “in the throes of a developmental crisis” when I went to college. Usually, young women are already past the crisis by the age of 18, so, once again, we are talking about an article whose author pretends that women are still not allowed to attend college.

Leaving that aside, however, I can say that I would have been very annoyed had the university where I got my BA tried to assess my social skills, work history, and community involvement. I never had and still don’t have any community involvement because the word “community” makes me cringe. I’m an autistic, so my social skills have always been quite poor. Nevertheless, I was a stellar student. During the graduation ceremony, I couldn’t leave the stage for several minutes, as the Provost kept enumerating my awards, distinctions, and prizes.

The kind of assessment this article proposes is also extremely invasive. As a student, I didn’t expect my professors to judge my life. I wanted them to impart knowledge, grade my progress, and – with all due respect to my wonderful teachers – keep away from the personal and social aspects of my existence.

I’m quite surprised that the author refers to this approach as “individualized.” What’s so individualized about judging all students on the basis of some imaginary standard of good social skills and appropriate community involvement?

Another problem with this suggestion is that it seems to imply that every student should need some kind of “support.” In case you don’t want support and feel like you are capable of dealing with the demands of college on your own, you are required to sign a waiver to this effect. In this way, self-reliant, independent, mature students are pathologized, while the overgrown babies who will need to be “supported” well into adulthood are positioned as the norm.

It’s mind-boggling what passes for science in some fields and what kind of pseudo-scientific studies get published and picked up by the media:

Researchers from the University of New Hampshire and Yale University wanted to understand more concretely how people gauge the monetary value of their belongings in relation to how loved and secure they feel. So researchers asked 185 study participants, average age 35, to complete a couple of exercises. First, they asked half the group to recall a time when they felt supported and cared for; the other half were asked to think about a fun experience, such as eating at a really great restaurant. Then, both groups were asked to put a money value on the blankets currently on their beds. The group who recalled a good dining experience valued their blankets at $173.30 on average, but the group who had thought about an experience of being loved valued their bedspreads at a paltry $33.38.

I know exactly how much the blanket on my bed costs because I paid for it. And that amount doesn’t change irrespective of which experiences I recall. I’m also kind of puzzled by the mention of the “paltry $33.38”. My blanket costs less than that, and I’m now asking myself what kind of a spoiled rich brat wrote this article.

What is really funny, though, is the way the scholar who conducted this study explains its usefulness:

“These findings seem particularly relevant to understanding why people may hang onto goods that are no longer useful. They also may be relevant to understanding why family members often fight over items from estates that they feel are rightfully theirs and to which they are already attached. Inherited items may be especially valued because the associated death threatens a person’s sense of personal security,” Lemay said.

Is there really anybody who doesn’t know the answers to these very simple questions? It is sad to see how much money is wasted on conducting so-called studies that demonstrate what already is painfully obvious.

 

Here is a really cool pie chart on how the way we consume music has changed in the last 30 years:

. . . I only wrote 3 blog posts yesterday.

. . . I spent 20 minutes staring at photos of Lady Gaga’s meat dress.

. . . there are several kinds of sausage in the house but I’m equally indifferent to all of them.

. . . it took me three tries to write the word “indifferent” correctly in the previous sentence.

. . . I haven’t been able to unpack the suitcase I came home with on Tuesday night.

. . . I read a colleague’s email twice but still have no idea what he is saying.

. . . I haven’t gone for my daily walk in 3 days.

. . . my husband has to make my tea because I’m too weak to do it.

. . . I didn’t talk to my sister on the phone.

. . . I forgot to eat.

. . . I started to find all the posts in my blogroll to be too complex for my understanding.

. . . all I want is for this stupid virus to leave me alone already!

I’m still very very sick, so this will be short.

It is a peculiarly American belief that the best way to save money is by spending. Thrift stores, dollar stores, bargain hunting, couponing, 2 for 1 sales – these are ways to spend, not to save. The only way to save money is not to shop. It isn’t about consuming the right way. It is about taking a little break from consuming here and there. I know that it sounds like an impossible proposition but it is, indeed, quite doable not to buy anything for three entire days. Or even a week. Or – strange as it may sound – ten whole days.

When I was 11, I saw the movie Jaws at one of the very first illegal video-salons. When video equipment became available to the fortunate few, they started organizing clandestine showings of American movies in their own apartments. The movies were translated and dubbed by translators who were terrified of being caught by the police. So they’d put clips on their noses to make their voices impossible to recognize. Every Soviet child of my age remembers the nasal voices of these translators that first introduced us to words like “sex”, “condom” and “democracy.”

For those of you who are much younger and unaware of Jaws, it’s a very silly and poorly made movie about a shark that keeps eating people in very gruesome ways. At the age of 11, though, I was very impressed. When I came home, I decided to put my sister to sleep by retelling to her the movie.

“And so the huge white shark reached the guy, snapped its jaws, and bit off his entire leg! And there was all this blood and pieces of human meat floating around!” I narrated excitedly.

Suddenly, I noticed that my sister was in the throes of an approaching crying jag. I was very familiar with those and knew that if she started bawling, my parents would awaken and kill me for upsetting the child with stories about sharks. And then they would kill me once again for visiting an illegal video-salon. As my sister was soundlessly shaking with an approaching bout of crying, I switched track in mid-breath.

“So then the squirrels. . .” I announced, hoping to distract my sister with her favorite story.

She was still at the point where she could burst out crying at any point but she was listening attentively.

“. . . invited the sharks to live with them in the tree-trunk. And the sharks became good and kind, and they all lived happily ever after.”

“And the feeeeerrets?” my sister sobbed.

“The ferrets lived with them and were also very happy.”

“And the man whose leg the shark bit off?”

“It wasn’t really his leg. It just seemed like it was. But he was perfectly fine.”

“And did he live in the tree-trunk with them?”

“Of course, he did.”

From then on, I had to narrate this story with the squirrels, the ferrets, the sharks, and the man who almost lost his leg, all living in the same tree-trunk and being very happy all the time.

When my sister was little, I had to spend a lot of time telling her fairy-tales to put her to sleep. When she was four, I was ten and a passionate reader of fairy-tales from around the world, so I had many stories to tell. However, my sister preferred the story I had invented on my own. The story was about squirrels who lived in a tree-trunk and had everything they could ever need. That’s it. That was the extent of the story. Squirrels living happily in a tree-trunk. I went on for hours, describing all the wonderful food the squirrels had hidden in their tree trunk, the super comfortable beds they had, and how they were never, cold, hungry, or in any danger.

I once tried introducing ferrets into the story as the squirrels’ enemies who tried to hunt them*. This didn’t go over very well with my sister who didn’t want to hear about anything even remotely bad happening to the squirrels. So I had to turn the squirrels and the ferrets into best friends. Then the ferrets got a comfortable, well-stocked tree-trunk of their own, and the story had now two groups of very happy animals.

In summer, we usually went to the country-side to visit my aunt Vera. She had two young kids of her own and they, in turn, had many friends between the ages of 3 and 8. One day, my sister gathered them all in a circle and announced,

“Clarissa knows this really great story about squirrels and she’ll tell it to us right now!”

I was a little unnerved, given that there wasn’t really a story. Or rather, the point of the story was that nothing ever happened to the squirrels.

“Wouldn’t you rather hear about Hodja Nasreddin? Or Cat in the Boots?” I asked. But my sister was determined her friends should hear about the squirrels.

For forty minutes I expatiated on the happiness of the squirrels and their friends, the ferrets. The kids were mesmerized.

“Wow,” said the eldest of them, an 8-year-old boy. “That’s the best story ever. Can you tell it again tomorrow?”

* I know nothing about the animal life, so I have no idea what the real relationship between the squirrels and the ferrets is.