It's Time to Boycott College Classes

College is hard, though not because we lack creature comforts or struggle to keep our bellies full. No, college is hard because it's so often an artificial environment. After four short years of learning, when reality intrudes on our life, we'll be left shaking cobwebs out of heads bleary from months of mind-numbing lectures and multiple choice exams.

Personally, the end of college scares me. As a sophomore, I have a couple of years before having to face that beastly post-college cliche, real life! That thought alone is enough to make me roll up into a ball and cry. Of course there is something that scares me more than college -- a dark, vague thought that intrudes on my consciousness, infecting my outlook on school. I'm scared that the time I spent here will be wasted.

As a pre-med, struggling to make the grade and ride the curve, time is a commodity in short supply. Like many students, the crunch of jamming my schedule full of classes quells my passion for learning. Sometimes I find myself in my room, books cracked open, and I wonder, what the hell am I doing? Am I happy? Where is this learning leading me? A friend of mine, in a similar academic situation, commented that he felt like he was losing his personality in his studying. No kidding -- sometimes I feel like if Catholics are right, and demons can possess your mind, it must all be directed by a God who dislikes organic chemistry students, and wants to leave them whimpering for mercy.

Strange metaphors aside, I wonder why someone like me, who enjoys a challenge and loves learning, is no longer cherishing this opportunity to polish his mental faculties and sharpen his mind to a keen edge. I'd like to think my doubts about the v...

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...endation is to boycott classes that fail to generate consistent interaction between professors and students. As for the required classes within a major that jam hundreds of pupils into a room, if enough students petitioned deans to hire more teachers, the voice of the masses would not be ignored.

Listen boys and girls, I know balancing budgetary restraints with educational goals taxes the brains of some of the brightest, but I'm tired of playing a game to cram my head full of facts without really understanding where they came from. Shoving it into short-term memory and then sloughing it just isn't cutting it for me. Rather, I would love to see a tuition and fee increase that explicitly aimed to reduce the size of large lectures instead of bolstering another bloated sport program. I would love to see my student government fight for such an increase.