The first part of this assignment involved watching a video and reading 13 articles. They all revolved around the topic of challenges that college students frequently face. After watching and reading, we had to identify 5 of these challenges. Finally, we had to post on the discussion board about the challenges, including which article or video referenced each challenge, and then explain which challenge has affected me the most as a student and why.
It would take an absolutely egregious amount of time to explain every article and every challenge they listed so I will just focus on the 5 challenges I identified. The 5 I chose also seemed to be challenges that were more common to all students, rather than ones that were more peculiar or specific.
The first challenge I listed was unaffordable tuition costs. Next, I listed increasing textbook costs. Thirdly, I identified the problem of using lecturing instead of active learning. Next, I wrote about the lack of sleep. Finally, I touched on having classes too early for optimal cognitive functioning.
The challenge that I said affects me most is absolutely unaffordable tuition costs. I talked about how I have to pay a large chunk of tuition money each year myself so I will be exiting college with a lot of debt I have to pay back later on. This is a very stressful problem, and puts a lot of concerning thoughts into my head when I think about the future.
Reflecting on this assignment, I think it was a really great idea to read through so many different articles that touched on challenges related to college. First, it was good to read about since it is so relevant to myself as a college student. Reading through different articles, I definitely recognize and identify with a ton of the things that were discussed in the article, which brings an emotional connection to the assignment.
Second, it allows me to realize that some of these problems truly are problems, and not just something I saw wrong with the college system. For example, there have been many times where a lecturer rambles on for 75 minutes and I think about how I would learn better through a different style of teaching. Additionally, I have thought about how I often have early classes but don’t function as well cognitively that early, which has lead to worse performance sometimes. Hearing other people identify these things as problems lead me to realize that my thoughts were warranted!
Additionally, reading so many articles lead me to learn about some of the other problems in modern college that I had not even thought about. For example, one problem is accessibility to courses for all students, including making sure buildings are wheelchair accessible. However, since I am very lucky to have no major physical impairments, I don’t think about this issue often. So, this assignment allowed me to learn about issues that are prevalent to others, and remind myself of issues I do not tend to think about.
Overall, the assignment was a solid one and allowed me to really think about all of the different problems with our current college systems. Not only was it interesting to read about, but maybe a student in this course can use this information to go out and try to make a change going forward!
The combination of relatable information with not so relatable information really made me think deeply about the articles, and about how different issues affect different people. I hope that as time passes, these issues can be addressed and college can be an even better place for people to thrive and prepare for their lives ahead!
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