By Jenni Hammitt
July 18, 2008
Just yesterday, I had an Admissions Advisor ask me to make an exception and let a student retest again. She claims the student says she did poorly because her mother was texting her the whole time she was taking the test. The texting was distracting her, and it wasn't fair to her.
This is what I can't figure out. The student was told several times by me and by the testing directions that her phone should be turned completely off. She either chose to ignore me, or she just didn't pay attention. Now if I were taking a college entrance exam, I would be darn sure to listen and pay attention. Wouldn't you? The student should have known about the rule, but she still thought it was okay to tell the Advisor she left it on and that is why she did poorly. Just by admitting that she broke one of the labs biggest rules, put her in jeopardy of never being able to take classes with us.
If we had chosen to, we could have pursued a cheating claim and had we been successful, she would be not allowed to enroll. Still, that was the excuse she gave. What kills me even more is that the Admissions Advisor (who's job it is to know the testing policies) bought her story and came down to plead her case. What made her think it was a good idea. I seriously do not think she saw it was a mistake until I reminded her that the student should not have had her phone on at all per our policy. Her mother's texts should not have been an issue. The student still thinks we are unfair, and the Advisor should have known better. Really, a little common sense could have saved us all from this scenario.
It all boils down to one thing: where is the common sense? Yes, there are clueless people in this world. However, there seem to be more and more of them these days. It is like personal responsibility, knowing right from wrong, and just plain being aware are rare traits. Being oblivious happens. When it happens chronically, it is annoying. When it happens because you don't think the rules apply to you, or you can't be bothered to listen or pay attention, it is a major problem. I see more and more of this every day and I am starting to worry.
It seems like common sense has been replaced by self absorption. If it isn't all about us, what we want and how we want it, we aren't interested. It doesn't even register to us. We want immediate gratification. God Forbid we wait a few seconds to have access to that perfectly good garbage can, lets throw the almost close and empty Sprite bottle over that girls head into what we assume is a trash can…but isn't. This really worries me.
Sometimes I feel bad. I don't want to seem like I think I am better than others. I make mistakes, and I have my share of less than classic moments. Still this wide spread loss of common sense just kills me sometimes! I see it in all age groups, but it seems to be most prevalent in the under thirty crowd. There are times where I can't tell if it is really abandoning common sense, being totally self absorbed or mix of the two. I've blamed the "entitlement monster."
Yes, the quickly spiraling out of control villain that has young people used to having everything done for them and given to them. Maybe if they would have learned personal responsibility, they wouldn't be as clueless. I don't know, and really I'm not trying to play the blame game. I just want to know how we got here so we can try and make it stop.
© 2008, Jenni Hammitt. All rights reserved.
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Thank You. I could not have said it better myself. I think that for the few of us left that active seek to teach our children to be responsible, to mind the details, and to have some common sense also have to start to teach them how to live with the masses that never will. The key is to not allow a massive divide to develop and cause the “resentment monster” to grow alongside of the “entitlement monster”. That or we can just hope that science finds a way to clone Godzilla. He’s pretty awesome at fighting monsters.
So what did the advisor do? I’m assuming she backed down after you reminded her the student shouldn’t have had the phone on in the first place. If you allow someone like that in, they’re just going to keep insisting that the rules don’t apply to them.
She backed down as soon as I reminded her about the phone rule. I let her know the student would be able to retest after she completed Adult Basic Ed classes…just like anyone else who tested below our ability to benefit…if the Dean chose not to have her banned from classes completely once we reported she admitted to not turning her phone off.