H8 for Non-Trads?

Photo by Ben Ostrowsky

I recently did a search on Twitter for "non-traditional students" and was a little surprised at what came up. It seems a lot of college students harbor a real dislike for non-traditional students. I read comments such as these gems:

• "I h8 non-traditional students"

• " Dear non traditional students put your hand down and shut the f**k up. I don't care"

• "YES i do have those non-traditional, over-achieving soccer mom students that think they have to comment on everything. whew."

Wow!

These comments are pretty harsh, but is there some truth in them? I would have to say that, yes, there is--at least from the perspective of a traditional-aged college student.

We non-trads forget that these students have just arrived at college fresh out of high school, a world where overachievement isn't smiled upon by your peers. I'm not saying that kids fresh out of high school aren't good students, just that many of them don't put in the all-out effort of the non-trads. They haven't had to, especially in a school system that rewards mediocrity. When you can coast without a lot of effort and still manage to get a "B" or even an "A" in high-school,  why on earth would you kill yourself to come up with a paper that would make your instructor weep with joy over all the extra effort you put in to it? When your peers are sometimes wearing ankle-monitor bracelets and stating that "The only reason I'm going to school is that my probation officer makes me," you wouldn't have to stretch yourself too far to get good grades, would you?

Before everyone comes unglued at me for the above ankle-monitor scenario, I realize that this is NOT the norm for high-school students. But when I was doing a field-experience at a high-school, I did hear a student make this comment, so I'm not making things up. But what I'm really getting at is that there is not a lot of incentive for a teenager to go all out to make grades. As long as they can ace the SAT or ACT, they'll make it into college.

Ok--back to us non-trads. Most of us have come not out of the classroom, but out of the working world, where theoretically at least, hard work is rewarded. You do whatever it takes to get noticed and promoted. When we go back to the classroom, our work experience turns us into "keeners." You know the type: answer for everything, challenges the instructor on every minutia, first to raise their hand, last to ever SHUT UP. I distinctly remember a non-trad from one of my literature classes: she was a psych major and psychoanalyzed every single nuance in a poem or other piece of literature. The day there was a short-story being taught and she stated that the plums mentioned in the piece were symbolic of the male reproductive organs was too much for me! As the quotation attributed to Sigmund Freud states, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Us non-trads need to remember this axiom. We are in the classroom to learn just like any other student is. We don't have to dominate every discussion; we don't have to engage in total over-kill over every assignment. Relax a little, will you? Enjoy your college experience--you don't have to be totally stressed out and over-prepared every day. Yes, by all means, study hard enough to get those good grades, but there is no requirement that you MUST graduate with a 4.0 GPA.

Ease back a little. Maybe the "trads" won't hate on you quite as much for showing them up then.

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