Friday, August 19, 2005
The aftermath...
Well, we survived. I have little else to say except that this must have been the worst registration period ever at this school. Why? I have two theories; 1) We have a new crop of students who have never attended before and are not familiar with the process. This group also has a sub-group: students who have never attened college and are the first to attend college in their families. These students represent a whole slew of challenges, one of which is limited English for Hispanics. The students themselves are generally OK, but the parents may not speak English to the point I can converse with them. If one would ask why I don't speak Spanish, you miss the point. Even if I could, I know that I would never be able to explain financial aid regulations sufficiently in ANY language (I speak some German) other than English. The other challenges include a lack of understanding of how long it takes to process one's FAFSA, and why I must correct the info. Also, the less familiar one is with the process, the more likely one is to believe financial aid is some kind of negotiation. For some schools it is, but the local community college is not among them. If I ask for a form, taxes, equity statements, etc., it means they are required. This is true at all schools if one is selected for verification; the negotiation comes with school-based aid, not government money. Ergo, some believe that I can do without this form or that, and then I close their folder and state if I don't get said item the student's classes go "poof!" and I stare at them so they know I'm serious. It's quite effective and saves my energy. As for the time constraints, reading past entries will demonstrate that financial aid is not instantaneous.
This leads me to me second theory, and it applies to students who have no family members in college, and those whose parents are doctors: Generation Y are the most spoiled bunch of over-posititve, over-indulged, undereducated brats EVER. How does this differ from my generation, Gen-X? We were never positive; we weren't then; we ain't now. I could go on a screed about literacy and books, but I'll instead direct you to google the term "quarter-life crisis" and come back. Back? Cool. Anyway, you see that this generation is suffering from the reality check their parents never gave them. Ergo, they march into my office and expect everything handed to them yesterday. Some of this is the Internet's fault, as expectations for immediate results are pandemic in this group. I'm 34 and as such if I had gone to college directly from high school I would never have even sniffed the Internet during my education, much less seen nude pictures of Alyssa Milano in my dorm room computer. Anyway, an 18 year-old has been using the 'Net since grammar school, so if they clicked send, it must be done right? Wrong, and on so many levels....**sigh** I can only hope these students learned their lesson and next year will not involve 8 hour waits and hypoglycemic fainting. More in the proverbial later.
This leads me to me second theory, and it applies to students who have no family members in college, and those whose parents are doctors: Generation Y are the most spoiled bunch of over-posititve, over-indulged, undereducated brats EVER. How does this differ from my generation, Gen-X? We were never positive; we weren't then; we ain't now. I could go on a screed about literacy and books, but I'll instead direct you to google the term "quarter-life crisis" and come back. Back? Cool. Anyway, you see that this generation is suffering from the reality check their parents never gave them. Ergo, they march into my office and expect everything handed to them yesterday. Some of this is the Internet's fault, as expectations for immediate results are pandemic in this group. I'm 34 and as such if I had gone to college directly from high school I would never have even sniffed the Internet during my education, much less seen nude pictures of Alyssa Milano in my dorm room computer. Anyway, an 18 year-old has been using the 'Net since grammar school, so if they clicked send, it must be done right? Wrong, and on so many levels....**sigh** I can only hope these students learned their lesson and next year will not involve 8 hour waits and hypoglycemic fainting. More in the proverbial later.
