Who Cares about Student Apathy?

Vague Thesis: How my brain keeps trying to make me go to college. I like a lot of people didn’t go to college straight out of High School. I took a year off. I did nothing. I went to school for a semester and realized I couldn’t pay for it and that what I thought I had wanted to do my whole life sucked and I hated it.

Standards are lowered as students are continually cheated of the material necessary to independently survive in the "real" world. The realization that I was cheated by social promotion finally came about my senior year of high school. As far back as I can remember I have had problems with math, but I passed every year up until I met Coach Taylor. He was a nonconformist in nearly every sense of the word. He definitely did not jump on the bandwagon of socially promoting students.

Every year it gets worse people are unable to utilize their knowledge that they are supposed to learn in high school. After people graduate, many people do not further their knowledge besides what they were able to grasp in high school. Many illiterate people vote in political campaigns without truly understanding why. They vote based on what they hear and see through advertisements. Majority of illiterate people do not read to inform themselves on who they are voting for.

Although I was a different person in high school, it is possible for people to truly change if they put their mind to it. In high school, I really did not care about my grades. My attendance was awful, skipping too many classes to count. I barely managed to pull off a 3.0 GPA by the end of my senior year. When I came to college, I knew grades were important but I did not realize how challenging it was to get above a 3.0 in college.

While Bob Dole is a isolated instance, many youthful voters feel that there is a ever growing distance between them and the older generations. Another reason that young people are turning away is lack of education towards politics. While this could be said for any age group, it seems to be more prevalent in younger people. The lifestyle of younger people does not allow for a everyday exposure to politics as those of a older generation. Thomas Banks, a 19 year old student, when asked why he was not watching the 1992 Presidential Debates responded, "I guess because I don't really see what's going on at college.

Although high school was over for me in June 2009, I still think about the memories of my freshman, sophomore, and junior years. In these first three years of my high school experience I did not participate in school activities except drama club and a beauty pageant. I regret my decision of not participating in clubs, or going to the sport games, and not attending events in school. I would go back and change this decision for many reasons. Not participating in school resulted in me not meeting as many classmates as I could have.

In retrospect, I believe that it was my inability to choose the classes I took which resulted in my lack of enthusiasm on the ride to school each morning. I must also acknowledge my role in my transcript’s substandard showing. As my SAT and ACT scores indicate, I have the potential to achieve success in any field chosen. However, I have procrastinated and failed to apply myself to my studies. This year I have made and earnest effort to improve my work ethic.

Why College Students Don't Vote It has become a growing trend in the 1990's that college students do not take advantage of their right to vote and to take part in the democratic system. In fact, only one out of every three individuals in the 18 to 24 age group cast a ballot in the 1996 presidential election. College students ranked as the least represented demographic" (http://www.idsnews.com/ news/2000.07.31/campus/2000.07.31.students.html). Students do not want to vote for many different reasons. They are considered apathetic by society, but this isn't really the case.

You might moan and groan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack of (and, yes, sometimes a tough grader)"(1). Should students just accept this and move on? I think so, being that most students who fail are not likely to be doing their work as requested by the professor. I beleive this is unfair to the other students and professors that put forth the effort and who value their education, The reason I mention this, also in Wiesenfeld's article he states,"Many, when pressed about why they think they deserve a better grade, admit they don't deserve one but would like one anyway"(1). This statement leads me ro beleive that the students who fail actually realize in the "real world" life is not something you take for granted.

Identity Crisis If I were to put myself back in high school I probably could not have answered the question "Who am I?". My identity crisis started towards the end of high school. While most students were worried about college and picking careers; I was not. As a teenager I was fairly off-beat. I never belonged to many crowds and the entirety of my high school career I floated from group to group.