Education with "a Capital E."

I love my job. I love working with students.

College is such a dynamic time in one's life. I'm absolutely in love with how hundreds of people come here from nearly every walk of life, rich, poor, fat, smart, hot, cold, local, international, black, white, mixed, Christian, Muslim, even Mormons who aren't afraid of learning show up sometimes -all come here with different world views trying to leap all kinds of different hurdles to gain an education for a myriad of reasons.

What I think I like most, is the education aspect. I am enthralled by how everyone learns. It might be the one thing that every human being has in common.

But speaking of commonalities, no matter how different all our students may be, there seems to be a lot of the same mistakes made. The psychologist in me wants to talk about Piaget or Erikson or Kholberg or Chickering, but I'll just save you the tired dogma and nerd-talk and drop it like this: Students are a lot like people.

I have a lot of the same conversations about mistakes and dumb decisions, etc. I also hear a LOT of the same excuses. That's cool. Students make mistakes. They should. For some reason, there are lessons out there to be learned that can only be taught through the pain of consequence. Drinking too much = hangover. Not studying = bad grades. Taking turns with your best friend's brother shooting each other in the chest with a paintball gun = bruise on your sternum that makes breathing painful.

Y'know, the basics.

I expect the bone-headed lack of thinking from students. Its comforting. Like the changing color of leaves in the Fall, or the snow in winter, these are things we've all come to expect and plan for. In fact, I would say these are things, students screwing up, are almost depended on by us. While we're disappointed to see them, fixing them working through them gives us a sense of efficacy and job-well-doneness.

But something that really chafes my ass is when PARENTS are behaving badly. You, gentle readers, have no idea how often it is that the parents of a student are completely to blame for their behavior or trouble.

And I'm not just talking about questionable parenting. I've seen girls with enough hard alcohol in their fridge to intoxicate the Irish National Soccer team and while watching them dump out their gallon bottles of tequila, bacardi 151, and vodka complain "my mother JUST bought this for me for my [18th] birthday tomorrow." I've seen parents who send their children to a very stressful first year at college on more drugs than Heath Ledger spending Flu Season at Keith Richard's house (too soon?) and not feel the need to tell anyone that their child might be under stress.

But today, a good friend of mine sent me an email that sorta summed up what we, as professionals, have to sometimes deal with.

"My daughter has expressed interest in attending [your institution]. She is a very good student (SAT 710 math 720 Verbal - member of American MENSA). My brother lived in [this town] for several years and he expressed concern about crime in the [this town] area. Since only about 35% of your students live on campus it follows that should she attend [your institution] she will at some point live off campus out side the safety area provide by the University. Please speak to the safety issues I have mentioned."

Please speak to the safety issues I have mentioned... I honestly don't know what I would have said if this lady, who has every right to be concerned about the safety of her daughter, would have suggested to me that I start worrying about the safety of students as if that weren't already my #1 concern already.

"Oh, make things safer?!?! I hadn't thought of that. Let me go get my tazer and bullet-proof vest. And ma'am, do you mind if I keep your number so that I may call you back for future sage advice? I might be chewing some food later, and while I get the whole 'move the jaw up and down' thing, I sometimes get confused on how my tongue works into the equation..."

I've been told my sarcasm is sticky.

The worst part is that I completely understand how these parents have a right to be concerned. I understand that they want to give their children everything and how they're giving up control and how that can be incredibly scary and the anxiety caused by such can sometimes cloud reasonable thought.

I understand parents who simply don't speak the "college language." It is a whole new world here of forms and FAFSA's and deadlines and housing deposits and core curricula. I can completely understand how the confusion of a first-time college parent can cause the eyes to cross and the straight-forward to bend.

What I don't understand is the consumer culture that college seems to have adopted. Just because you pay to attend, does NOT mean you pay to have your happiness guaranteed. Good grades are a product that can be purchased only through effort, not cash.

Perhaps it is I that needs to change my attitude. Perhaps I need to realize that in today's fractured family unit, a student is not the only one receiving the education. Perhaps my inability to understand that not every parent is like mine, and expects me to deal with my messy roommate or the dude down the hall who watches animal porn "because it's funny, dude" on my own. Perhaps I am the strange one for thinking that my dealing with these issues without having my parents call the President's office made me a little better equipped to deal with the world at large.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.