![]() Your writing, trigonometry, and poetry classes may not seem relative now, but you will find uses for every single one of them in the future, whether you use them to teach your future children, to think in more abstract ways, or use practical skills in your profession, will all depend on the path you pave for yourself. In almost every class, I notice at least one student desperately scrolling through Twitter or Instagram, like a deprived addict. SparkNotes is one of many examples that prove that college was more serious before computers were everywhere. ![]() Currently, I am taking a computer science course, and people browse their social media accounts on the school desktops while the professor is lecturing. Who would have known that the Internet would hurt academia? If used correctly, it could be used as a valuable learning tool, but many students are using it in vain these days. It’s nothing you should be proud of, especially when a small fortune goes into expanding your academic palette and pushing you to grow into a well-rounded adult. ![]() Most of all, I want students to stop bragging about cheating. What will you do when you get into the workforce and all of your co-workers are talking about “The Bell Jar,” but you did not actually read it? Put aside your personal grievances with reading, and think of it as a way to build your character and intellectual abilities. Is it really that difficult to read a few chapters a day? I know a lot of college students have jobs and are taking the maximum amount of credits, but we all knew what we were getting into when we listened to our professors read the syllabus aloud on the first day of classes. But here’s the issue with using SparkNotes in college: not only are you depriving yourself of useful and enriching knowledge, you are also setting yourself up to fail. In a previous article I tried to dissect why so many high school and college students despise reading, and I pointed out that Shakespeare and Poe probably scare off reluctant readers. He’s part of the problem we need to challenge students, not coddle them. Everyone in that class looked at me with devilish eyes, but they were surprised to hear him say that he assigns enough reading as-is. Even then, students were failing his reading quizzes weekly and you could tell by just looking at him that he was burned out. I was the only one who raised my hand, and I told him that he did not assign enough readings, as he was only assigning 20 pages per week. One day he asked what he was doing wrong, because he felt he was not doing everything he could to make the class blossom. Last semester I had an English professor who was constantly talking about his absurd family stories and his tenure. Why are today’s college students so lazy when it comes to reading? I realize that I sound like a Debby-do-right, but even English majors are using this website instead of reading for pleasure like prior literature and English majors did. They carry around the books and shuffle through them during class, but when their professors are not standing over them, they brag about using a terrible website called SparkNotes to cheat on their homework. ![]() The one that bothers me the most is the hard truth that few students actually bother reading their assigned texts. Since attending both a two-year and four-year college, I have made some stunning realizations.
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