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Editorial: Is there life after Uni?
Editorial cartoon by Aliisa Rantanen (click to enlarge)Encountering the world beyond UniPublished: Sunday, February 17, 2008 - 7:00pm
Note: The following editorial expresses the fears and speculations that we, the senior editors, have about the future awaiting us in college. Our comments about how some Uni graduates fare in college are based on our own experiences with, and observations of, Uni alums we personally know.
EVERY DAY, UNI students wake up before the sun, drag their butts out from between their warm sheets, perform their daily morning routine, and begin the trip to school.
They then spend the next eight hours shuffling between classes. Finally, the end of the day comes, which means, for a majority of Uni students, another two hours spent practicing a sport or rehearsing scenes from a play.
Their arrival at home still does not provide a respite from Uni-related activities, since students will then crack open their textbooks and spend the next couple of hours on homework. The result is often more than 12 hours per day devoted to Uni.
Editorial cartoon by Zoë Schein (click to enlarge)The bottom line: Uni is a Uni student’s life.
So what happens when students leave and must deal with a world that is not Uni-centric? To paraphrase Cher, “Do you believe in life after Uni?”
As we, the senior editors, face the reality of college life in the coming fall, we wonder how well Uni has prepared us for this monumental transition.
We’ve all heard the stories of Uni alums who essentially crash and burn upon arriving at college.
Some have trouble making friends, some can’t cut ties to the C-U community, and some just don’t like their new environment. These students may spend countless hours contemplating a possible transfer to a new college, and a bold few actually set out in the hope of finding the “perfect fit.”
Is this par for the course, or is there something about Uni that leaves its students especially vulnerable to the social and academic shock that college can provide?
We say that Uni’s nature is at fault. The combination of Uni’s small size and its all-encompassing claim over our lives results in an inhibited social environment.
For starters, Uni’s supposed accepting environment mutates a student’s ideas of what is appropriate, mature behavior. Is it really OK to waddle down the hallways squawking like a chicken?
Furthermore, Uni’s warm and fuzzy — aka “nurturing” — approach to high school can baby the students. A troubled student, no matter how asinine his or her complaint, is immediately taken care of by a faculty member, a fellow student, or an administrative figure. Offending pictures will be removed from lockers, disruptive PDA will be immediately broken up, and students accused of any degree of misconduct will be dealt with, regardless of the validity of claims made against them.
The result is an inability to cope with one’s own problems. Uni students assume that their grievances will be a top priority and handled without any imposition on them. This surely is not the case elsewhere. People have to solve their own problems maturely, without a security blanket named Ms. Kovacs.
Not only does Uni’s character protect its students, it also smothers personal development. Our growth throughout the five years is curtailed sometime during sophomore to junior year. As our group of friends solidifies, our yearning to move in new directions is inevitably restricted by preconceived notions of who we are.
While the first couple of years at Uni may be an exciting time to express your individuality and flourish in an “accepting” environment, you will eventually be pigeonholed to this facade. “Creepy Dance-By-Herself Girl” will always be “Creepy Dance-By-Herself Girl.” “Loud, Obnoxious Boy” will always be “Loud, Obnoxious Boy.” This is a paradox unique to Uni.
Furthermore, we are limited in our ability to make connections outside of school. Perhaps at another school, the opportunity to create new friendships and to redefine oneself would be easier. Your anonymity, to a certain degree, would still be intact and you would have enough time to explore the community outside of school. Thus, you would enjoy a more diversified social scene where pulling a Madonna wouldn’t raise eyebrows.
There are two general types of people that we see Uni’s boundaries creating.
The first are the people who are overconfident in their academic abilities, and who believe that they are smarter than most of the students outside of Uni, if not smarter than their Uni peers. We believe that this population is a majority at Uni.
The second are the people who have let the ultra-intense academic Uni environment, coupled with the equally intense students, intimidate and ultimately damage their self-confidence. While this population is a minority at Uni, it is often overlooked and marginalized.
At any rate, our fear is that Uni has skewed our perceptions of who we really are. Either we think we’re cooler than we actually are, or we are sure we can’t fit in anywhere.
We, the senior editors, are apprehensive of how this will play out in college.
For Uni grads who fit the first archetype, problems in the college setting may arise when they meet people who are superior to them. Their self-worth comes into question, and they sometimes crave a return to a setting where being No. 1 was normal. They can have trouble making friends because they are so used to being well received that they can’t comprehend the possibility of being “unpopular.” They don’t like playing second fiddle to the elite students around them.
People in the second mold encounter problems outside of Uni when their acceptance of social isolation makes them sure they can’t find friends. These students may be so sure of their guaranteed exclusion from peers that they never quite break out of their shell and flourish socially. They may feel like misfits for their entire college career and sometime after, simply because they couldn’t find a place for themselves within Uni’s limited network.
The overarching theme in our concerns is that we worry that Uni does not prepare us socially for the real world. However, we do recognize that many Uni students flourish in college. In fact, those who attend a small, liberal arts school whose environment parallels Uni will probably find the transition fairly easy.
Furthermore, most of the senior editors have found the past years at Uni enjoyable. Some of us couldn’t have wished for a better high school experience. The teachers are insanely passionate and dedicated, the students are motivated and interesting, and we realize how lucky we are to have been afforded the opportunity to attend such a great school.
We are nevertheless apprehensive of the future. The amount of time we’ve spent in the bubbled Uni environment has left us wondering whether we can create a life for ourselves without Uni being the centerpiece.
Will we be able to adjust to the new social climate that will welcome us in the future? Will we be able to deal with the new experiences in a healthy way?
If not, how much does this reflect on Uni, and how much does it reflect on the individual?
Click here to find out more about the Gargoyle senior editors (listed under co-editors-in-chief).
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Comments
Great Article
This is a great article, and even though I'm still a freshman, it voices many of the concerns I've had about college.
The Uni Experience
It may be hard to imagine this, but I probably would have been a Uni student (or at least aspired to) if I had lived nearby. Instead, I went to a large, public, highly mediocre school, where I was mostly anonymous, but did (thanks to music) have a group with which socializing was, if not easy, at least possible. Other top geeks in my school were not so fortunate. The "creepy dancy by herself girl" in your article never would have made it to a dance. The "loud obnoxious boy" would have been beaten up, ostracized, or both. Anonymity does NOT engender social skills.
It can be enticing to look at the "typical" student at another school, and lament about features of his or her life that are foreign to your life. Had you been a student at that other school, however, I seriously doubt that you would have been typical. You mention sports or play practice, for example. The V/JV basketball team at my 1600-student high school had fewer boys on it than our team does. Yes, we had football... OK, 30/1600 adds less than 2% of the student population. So all sports, all theater, all dance group/marching band/etc. students at my school would be a much smaller percentage than the comparable student activity level at Uni. Part of your anonymity might have been lack of access to sports teams, or theater productions, or the school newspaper. Your success at Uni (even your being at Uni) attests to an internal drive that would have set you apart at my high school. And by apart I mean potentially isolated.
Your article definitely raises some interesting questions, and I'm glad you wrote it. One of the issues the faculty has begun to examine is what, really, does Uni offer our students? Said differently, you came into Uni as bright students, you perform well on ACT/SAT/AP (duh!); so what difference did Uni make?
I'd be very interested in seeing alumni perspectives and responses to what you wrote.
yes, and there is life AT Uni too.
I don't usually take the time to comment on Gargoyle articles, but I think that this article merits response.
Blaming Uni for the failure of certain individuals to adjust to a college environment and for students supposed lack of social skills is preposterous. It is easy to blame your problems on Uni's small social environment and academic rigorousness, but this argument is ultimately specious. This editorial posits that Uni students find it harder to adjust to the college environment than students enrolled in traditional high schools, but the truth is that these claims are based on pure speculation; none of the authors have any experience with what "typical" high school students have to deal with in their transition to college. From my limited knowledge of these experiences, I would hypothesize that the tribulations of Uni alumni are not any greater than graduates of other schools attending similar universities. I have often heard of people who were smart, popular, and widely connected individuals in high school having a terrible time their freshman year in college.
Uni’s small environment and fraternal atmosphere doesn’t smother student’s development any more than a large high school atmosphere does. At Uni we have chess players who have started on the varsity soccer team. There are individuals who have gone to state in track, and also in math. Our journalism students not only cover volleyball, cross country, and basketball, but they also play them. There are precious few other schools where this would be even remotely possible. People change over their high school careers, and since Uni is so close it can seem a little hard to change how you are, however in a large high school it would be even harder. At Uni, everybody knows everybody else, and that makes it easier to form new friend groups. Imagine how hard it would be to change yourself if the only people you really knew in your school were those people in your friend group. It would be much harder to change your scene, as you would have to get to know complete strangers first.
The editors seem to think that Uni does not socially prepare its students for life in the "real world." Though this is never directly said in the editorial, the editors themselves have been known to make this allegation, and it seems to be an underlying theme throughout the article. What they do not realize is that a vast majority of students will not be entering the "real world" after leaving Uni. Most of us next year will attend a school from a relatively short list of academically outstanding colleges-the Unis of the collegiate world, as it were. The students that are drawn to these colleges are not going to be that different from Uni students, and it would be ignorant to say that this academic setting, similar to the one we are already in, in any way constitutes the “real world”. It is not even clear to me what the “real world” indicates, as a lot of people will go on to graduate from college, and get a job or go on to graduate school, never having to cope with a situation radically different than that of this school. However, I must admit that undoubtedly there will be some situations in which it is important to act socially mature, which, the authors of this editorial would postulate, would be more challenging for a Uni alumnus. Uni permits social immaturity, and accords it a certain amount of normalcy. This, it is true, causes many students to act less mature than they probably would otherwise. However, there is a huge difference between performance and potentiality. Though many students act immaturely at Uni, this only means that they feel safe enough in the environment that they can be a little bit wacky. If they felt that it would be inappropriate or unacceptable to act in this fashion, most people would shape up. This will be what happens when they have to deal with diverse situations in college, and in the rest of their lives. Maybe it won’t even be necessary for them to curtail their naturally human immaturity if they end up at the right school. In conclusion, Uni offers a relaxed enough environment that people feel free to be expressive and a little bit socially immature, but if people were in a situation where maturity was needed, most could rise to the occasion. For those students that are naturally immature no matter the situation, I would say that a public high school education would be extremely detrimental to their well-being. They would be shoved aside and marginalized whereas at Uni they are given time to mature at their own pace. When people fail to adjust to college, it is not the fault of their Uni education, their troubles would be at least as bad, if not worse, if they had gone to a traditional high school.
This editorial seems intent on enforcing stereotypes about Uni students, while at the same time blaming the institution itself. When we go off to college, there is no chance that anything remotely resembling the editorial cartoon will happen, as some of our peers will probably have gone to similar magnet or lab high schools. Uni is not notorious in the collegiate world as a “nerd school” and it is aggravating to think that people actually believe that Uni has made us so much more different than other students. I find it hard to believe that Uni students are reinforcing such a negative generalization of ourselves.
On the topic of generalizations, I feel that it is dangerous to categorize the Uni community into two diametrically opposed groups. There are, the editors claim, the “smarty pants” who think they are astronomically superior in intelligence to everyone else around them, and the more “normal” kids who end up with inferiority complexes because of the unbounded arrogance of the rest of Uni students. The generalization of the Uni student who feels intellectually superior to outsiders, their classmates, and their future collegiate peers is an especially hurtful and fallacious generality. Students at Uni are pretty sharp, defiantly smart enough to realize that they are not the absolute smartest people in the world. In general, there will always be someone better than you at everything, and it is evident that if you attend an academically challenging university, there will be plenty of people smarter than you. This does not mean that Uni students will be playing “second fiddle,” as many graduates will be academically competitive at any college they go to. However, even if they are not in the top echelon of intellectuals in college, Uni students are academically gifted individuals and can thrive intellectually whether or not they are the absolute smartest. Contrary to the implication of this article, Uni students do not resent people who are smarter, but rather respect them. While the issue of those Uni students who feel themselves to be inferior to the rest of the crowd is a little more concerning, this does not resign them to a lifetime of insecurity and social failure, as the editorial goes on to suggest. It is important for everyone to realize that intelligence is not everything, and that it doesn’t really matter if you think that you are not as smart as your peers, you are ok how you are. What is really important is that you try your hardest, give it your all.
Overall, I find that these stereotypes of Uni students, and the dire predictions for years to come are extremely disheartening to read. If one is discontent, blaming the institution and the social environment is not they way to go. Perhaps it would be better to search inwardly and ponder the source of one’s discontent, and even think about why one wants to be at Uni in the first place. This editorial may speak for all the senior editors (which I’m not convinced that it does), but it sure does not speak for all the seniors. Its generalizations of student character and accusations of social stagnancy at Uni are neither accurate nor appreciated. The fabrication of a problem with Uni’s tightly nit and socially distinct environment and the qualms of live after Uni that this editorial instills are unhelpful and discouraging to all the seniors who are ready to push on to a successful college career.
I agree with a lot of what
I agree with a lot of what Julian has said, especially in regard to the generalizations that the senior editors are making about a wide variety of people. However, I also think that some points were missed.
First, the article mentions very little about the "social scene" in a college. What this does is create a list of things wrong with our current social norms, without anything to compare it to. I hope you realize that there are "loud obnoxious boys" at any college you wish to attend.
This article seems to assume that once you reach college: 1. you will not be spending most of your time in/studying for/going to classes. 2. you enter a world where everyone is mature and will immediately shame those who aren't. 3. you will not have anyone who can be a security blanket for you, such as Ms. Kovacs is now.
1. The editors say that Uni takes up most of our time. IN THEORY, college should do this as well. Classes, homework, sports, plays, going to school events: they all happen at college, and while some people choose not to make it as important in college as it was in high school, one could reasonably spend most of their time devoted to school related activites.
2. I have practically lived on college campuses all my life, and I'm not talking exclusively about the U of I. Every college/university I've visited, spent time at, or even just walked around on, I've seen and heard loud obnoxious people. Maturity is not something that magically arrives when you turn 18. Nor should it be expected to magically appear for every student at a particular campus. The editors make it sound as if Uni's atmosphere encourages this immaturity, thus screwing us all over for "the real world." If this is the main idea, I would suggest looking around a college campus, or an office building. Immaturity exists everywhere.
I also have a problem believing that it is simply our school that "mutates a student's idea of what is acceptable behavior." I strongly believe that other high schools and even colleges do this too. When is it EVER appropriate to scream obscenities about people that you don't know, and hate on principle simply because they're not from the same place as you? The answer is any college football game. It is simply not true to say that Uni is the only place that offers a different outlook on "appropriate behavior."
3. While it is true that we will no longer have Ms. Kovacs to go to bat for us in college, the editors say that we will lose that security forever, as soon as we arrive in our dorm with our bags. Again, this is not true. If Ms. Kovacs is the only person at school that you feel can help you when you need it, then I don't think you know your teachers well enough. At your desired college, you will meet other people: professors, counselors, and others whose desire is to help you make it. College in general is not a hateful environment where teachers' sole goal is to fail you. While at larger schools you may not be able to have all of your problems fixed for you, there are still people who are willing to help you.
Which reminds me, I find it difficult to believe that the student editors have so little faith in their peers, fellow seniors, to solve their own problems. Contrary to this article, I highly doubt that every senior at this school is unable to cope with their own problems. We are on the whole, bright, responisble, capable people. This should help, not hinder our ability to make it on our own, and the editors' disregard for this is horrifying for me. I simply cannot believe that the editors are saying that no one is capable enough to have a thought, make a change, and control their own environment.
To all the seniors who read this, and immediately felt as though their life would ultimately fail after Uni (and also to the editors):
Please take the time to realize that at any college you go to there will be people there to help you make the adjustment from high school to college. They are not as different as I feel the editors made them out to be. School will still be the most important thing in your life, and while there may be more opportunities for social failure, there are also more opportunities for social success, something that a larger munber of people guarantees, and something that was not mentioned in the article.
In conclusion, I do not think that because we attend Uni, we are ill-prepared for the road ahead, and I wish that my peers, the senior editors, felt the same way.
Thanks, Julian and Chelsea
Thanks, Julian and Chelsea for your responses. You're right that not everyone has the same experience at Uni or even falls roughly into one of the two categories that the senior editors described. Your two very well thought-out opinions are proof enough of that.
Poking holes in generalizations is easy. Accepting that these generalizations (whether or not they are 100% accurate or "appreciated") make a significant and often overlooked point about our environment - that is not so easy. Please do not trivialize the sentiments of the many (trust me, I mean MANY) current and former Uni students whose views were carefully considered and represented in this article.
I think both of your responses underestimate the drastic effect that Uni has had on our perspectives and behaviors over the last five years, and they both appear to give a person's environment very little credit for shaping them or at least making them feel as they do. The senior editors do not seem to be willing to put all or even most of the blame on the shoulders of the individual, something you both seem to assert. I can accept that this is a difference of opinion, but please, it's insulting to imply that the senior editors' views are inaccurate and unappreciated because you (or even a majority) happen to disagree with them.
I'm going to have to side
I'm going to have to side with Julian and Chelsea. Generalizations were made in the article not only about Uni students but also about students from other high schools as well as college as a whole. You might be right that a lot of Uni students have a difficult time adjusting to college, but so do many other high school students. Many students who come from large public high schools with low standards for achievement have difficulty adjusting to the difficult and workload at the college level. Students at Uni have both a lot more freedom and a lot more responsibility than other high school students, making Uni more like college in many ways. If you're talking about the social aspect of college, I think the problem might be that we're watching a bit too much "American Pie." People expect that college will be easier, better, and more fun than high school because that's how it's portrayed in the media. Suddenly everything you do in high school has to be contextualized in terms of college; how it helps you get into college.
Gross Generalizations
My response's primary goal was not to trivialize the sentiments of those who would agree with this article, but rather to question the validity of an argument which incorporates stereotypes of the whole Uni community. I feel that the senior editors have overstepped their boundaries in dividing Uni students up into inaccurate and frankly insulting categories, both of which seem to be doomed to failure in an academically challenging college environment. This claim is a dangerous reinforcement of preexisting stereotypes that are simply not true. The editors complain of the student body's inability as a whole to connect to other students outside of Uni, and viewing ourselves in this manner won't do anything to alleviate this undeniably present issue.
This is where we disagree
I don't see the distinctions made in the editorial as insulting or inaccurate to the point of irrelevance. Yes, there are generalizations. Yes, generalizations are intrinsically inaccurate. Your argument is that you don't think that the social constructs that were pointed out in the editorial are significant or relevant, and the senior editors clearly disagree. Ignoring what one's perception of reality says because it may be construed as a dangerous reinforcement of stereotype is cowardly and submissive. The senior editors seek to touch on sensitive issues, not soothe insecurity.
Life after Uni
I must admit that this is an interesting article that proposes many worthwhile, yet unanswerable questions. For this reason, I, like Mr. Russel, am glad that this article was written, even if I don't completely agree with some of the arguments within it. I think it is important to think about this topic, even if the questions don't have one correct answer, in order to be better aware of the situation and potential problems. Even now, a week or so into my second semester as college student, I find myself thinking about, talking about, and even questioning the value of my five years at Uni. (For example, even just last night I was talking to my roomate, discussing the selection of sports at our respective high schools. Of course this is also a regional thing; to my knowledge central Illinois doesn't feature many down-hill skiing teams.)
Unfortunately, both the college application experience and the transition from high school to college are things you must go through before you can truly know how to go about it the best way. (I by no means consider myself an expert on either of those topics, but I do hate the feeling of knowing what I *should have* done.)
Personally, I think that the initial college experience has a lot of luck playing into it. Luck plays a role on who you meet and whether you'll find that niche of people you fit in with and truly get along with.
One of the major problems that Uni creates, which is hinted at at in the article, is that as a "group of friends solodifies," there is a tendency to not go out and meet new people (people outside of Uni). I think that this is a result of Uni's tight, 300-person enclosure, where meeting and getting to know a Uni student of your own age becomes harder as you get closer to graduation and it is much harder to meet people outside of school. Now I'm not saying that students of bigger schools do not have this problem, but they do have a bigger opportunity to meet new people within the school as a direct result of the larger population. For the worried seniors, I'd say go for it; try and find that niche and group of "best friends" in college, but don't forget that there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of other people your age to meet.
Mr. Russel and Julian bring up a good point that Uni has a huge percentage of students who not only participate in one extra-curricular, but participate in several, a feat that is hard to pull off at a bigger school. This gives people the opportunity to test out things that interest them. This is a big part of the college experience, especially the first year or so. This is especially true when you go to a small liberal arts school. I'd be willing to say that as seniors you have gone through 4 and a half years of a miniature version of a liberal arts college (minus the class selection/variety. Of course that is one of the biggest problems with Uni, in my mind.) I think that this aspect of Uni is one of the defining features and is a benefit you might not get at a larger school.
Both the small, academic-oriented high schools and the big, public high schools offer benefits, but neither completely prepares their students for the academic or social changes that they must overcome to be successful/happy in college. The issue of whether a Uni student makes an easy transition into college life or not varies incredibly depending on the person and the college. I would not really blame Uni entirely (maybe a tiny bit) for the successes or for the failures.
My recommendation as the first step for avoiding a poor transition into the college world is to avoid going into college with the attitude that you (as a Uni student) are weirder/stranger/more socially awkward than the people you'll meet at college. Use any freshman orientation to get to know people, you'll undoubtedly be running into some of them later.
Robert Croisant
Uni Class of '07
more on generalizations
The thing about these generalizations is that they are, I would venture to say, untrue most of the time. Firstly, these stereotypes are inaccurate beyond the point of relevance, at least in a general case. A majority of Uni students go on to have successful college careers, and applying these rude generalizations to them is not acceptable. For those that struggle in college, can you really blame that on Uni? Can you really take them, split them into two groups and tell them that they have had an unsuccessful time at college for one of two reasons? No. There is a myriad of reasons why people have trouble with any situation, and categorizing them like this is ridiculous. Secondly, if the editors perceive these things among themselves, I have no problem with them writing a self-referential article about their personal qualms about college, but it seems inappropriate to bring the whole student body into it.
Here's to the crazy ones
Adding to what Julian said, I believe that the editorial misrepresented the importance of the "social" component to college. Don't get me wrong, it's extremely important to have a network of friends, people you can trust, people you can hang out and decompress with. But what defines social success? It's not about whether you're popular or not. It's not about that at all, and I would have hoped that uni students especially would have learned that by now. Someone may "waddle down the hallways squawking like a chicken," but are you really trying assert that no one else at college will be at least that weird? Look around you close enough and you will find something weird, quirky, or even repulsive about everyone.
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