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My friend D just called to rant about a classmate. She's in the small ensemble choir at school and the only real bass they have is being an absolute idiot. To the point that it looks like the choir director Dr. T will be asking him to leave the choir. D says that this guy is a wonderful singer but that he has this condescending attitude which is rubbing everyone the wrong way. Even the person who gives him a ride to school is seriously considering making him walk to school.
This just makes me think that there is a serious flaw in the thinking of many students going to college today and it doesn't matter if they are going to a 2-year or a 4-year school. Pretty much every college freshman, and a good majority of upperclassmen, believes that college is an extension of high school. This is especially true of the men.
Back when I first started going to college 37 years ago it was to a community college in Upstate New York. The party attitude prevailed then, too, because the majority of students still lived at home. Only those whose family lived more than 25 miles away or had to drive more than an hour one way took apartments in the area. And those students were a little less into the party scene. But there were parties every almost weekend. How anyone managed to actually managed to graduate was beyond me. Even I had that attitude.
At the time I was there in the mid 70s this college did NOT have this nasty thing called "Academic Probation". That's when the college won't let you participate in extracurricular activities if your GPA goes below a certain level. So I enjoyed myself and my grades suffered. After attending this 2-year school full-time for 3 years I had only 30 credit hours (I should have had 90) and had a GPA of 1.37. That's a D+. So as you can probably guess, I didn't graduate.
I did eventually go on to get a BA, but it took two more colleges and 3 1/2 more years to do so. And my GPA at graduation was barely a 2.35.
Colleges cannot check the maturity level of their students. They can only hope that the students realize and understand that college course work requires them to be adults and to behave like adults, not petulant children that act out, are condescending to other students, or think they are a Diva. Once a student starts to behave like that that student needs to be called out on their actions.
Responsible adults are just that, responsible. They are also respectful of others no matter whether they agree with that person. It is the hope that if one is being respectful to a person it means that one also respects that person, but that's not always the case.
D's classmate proved himself to be a spoiled, petulant Diva who was disrespectful not only to the choir director, but also to the accompanist and the rest of the choir. One can only hope he gets his comeuppance.
Update: Well, it looks like Dr. T did give the Diva a talking to because D told me that he came into choir and apologized to everyone. He also got kicked out of the choir. Yay for Dr. T!
