Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Research Blog #2: Scouting the Territory
For my topic, I still would like to write about students' social life vs. academic life. However, as you commented on my last post that "there is no possible equilibrium: your future (and the good of society perhaps) depends on success in academics, and 'student life' is openly antagonistic to that success," i'm not sure where I stand on that. College life and living in a dorm, all on your own away from your parents and everyone else from back home, teaches you a lot. You learn to be more independent, to do your own laundry, to make yourself food (when you aren't just going to the dining hall), good time management, and most importantly to be more sociable. With how society is today, in order for you to go far in the working world you need to be social with others and voice you're opinion to get what you want. If you go through life being very quiet and not speaking up for yourself, you won't really get anywhere. Although academics plays a huge role in determing your future, the social aspect is very important too. If it weren't for this college life, I feel that it would make things so much harder for a lot of people when they get out into the "real world." I also looked up the book "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert like you suggested, and he makes some interesting points, but I'm not exactly sure how this goes along with my feelings toward students in college.
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I guess I'm just not sure how "social life vs academic life" or "balancing the two" becomes a topic, exactly. I imagine there could be some approach. You might look at more of Rebecca Nathan's book, as she discusses the time management of college students, and that could lend itself to some primary research. Perhaps time management is more easily defined than finding a "happy mean" between academic work and "college life."
ReplyDeleteYou see, if you ask experts, professors and other professionals how much time college students should devote to their studies, you would hear that they need to devote a lot more time than they do currently and a lot more time than they do to their "social life" if they want to gain the skills to succeed in the ways higher education is designed to encourage. To become a doctor, professor, scientist, or lawyer means, generally, sacrificing a great deal in your social life. There is no "balance." But if you lower your expectations and are just seeking to graduate from college with no particular focus, you can certainly create a "balance" between the two. And since "happiness" is a moving target and "success" can be subjective, students generally still achieve "happiness" and their own ideas of success. That's why I suggested "happiness studies" as a frame, since it offers a good way of interpreting the results of striving toward equilibrium. Some would call that "mediocrity," but the individuals themselves might call that "a balanced life."
You need to look at online materials and react to them. Try some Google searching (especially try Google scholar) and see what you turn up.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point when you say that if you just want to graduate with no specific goals in mind and no particular focus that you can have a good balance between the two, but otherwise, in order to succeed you need to sacrafice a big part of your social life. I didn't really think of it like that. But now that i have thought about that, I think my topic for my paper would be better to be arguing that although college life plays a big role in the whole college experience, if you want to get far in life you need to make some sacrafices and focus more on what you want to do with the rest of your life and not just the fun things there are to do around campus. I'm still working on this whole idea and trying to maybe come up with something a little better. For now though, I think I'm heading more in this direction now and could maybe add in somthing about the cost of school and how we are paying for a good education and not just being able to have a good time. College takes a lot of hard work and if we aren't focused enough on our academics that it's almost a big waste of money. These are just some of my thoughts, I still need to bring it all together though, so i ultimately have one main idea.
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