Transcript
Me: Hello class. I am about to interview Claire Bulkeley. She is 19 from Plano, Texas and is currently a freshman at Mizzou. She lives in Hudson, the dorm Hudson. Hello Claire.
Claire: Hi
Me: What is the most misconceived ideal about your culture group?
Claire: That would probably have to be that we take college lightly. We party instead of work towards school.
Me: I agree. I have noticed the impression that people say, especially I've noticed that my family says "don’t always just party, you have to study", they just automatically assume that we are only parting.
Claire: That’s probably because they partied when they were freshman in college too.
Me: Mhm, but they don’t realize that it’s a lot harder now a days. I mean first semester is almost over, how many hours would you say you study a week?
Claire: A week? Well I have 6 mandatory hours a week but I probably double that at least.
Me: Mhm just to stay in the competition. Just to make C’s alone. Its gotten so much harder in a class filled with… how many students on average are in your classes?
Claire: My lecture class… 300 and my smaller classes have about 30.
Me: Okay. The smaller classes, it’s a lot more personal. Does that force the competition to come out even more?
Claire: It forces competition but it also forces us to work together. You know the people that you're with and it's kind of like they push you to do better. I know in my Russian class that’s what we do. We do study groups. We push each other. We all know the struggles to decide whether to go out or stay and study for a test the next week. So they help me make the right decisions.
Me: Mhm. Well you're no stranger to competition. I am familiar with your school, Plano, I know it's competitive. What kind of grades did you have to make just to be in the top 25 percent in your grade?
Claire: Plano is one of the most competitive districts in the nation and that’s where I come from. Basically I had a 3.6 and I was probably just above top half in my school with a 3.6. and in my grade there were over 1400 kids so that means there were at least 700 kids with a gpa above 3.6.
Me: I would say that is drastically different from previous generations our parents, our grandparents, class sizes weren’t nearly as big and the competition wasn’t nearly as competitive. So do you think that because they don’t completely understand that the misconceived idea that were just slacking off do you think that that has affected you negatively?
Claire: Well I don’t think they understand the true competition. They know their kids are gone doing school work or volunteering. One of the things we had to do in Plano to stand out was we had to volunteer, you had to play a sport, just anything to put on your resume. I was in yearbook, I played tennis and golf. You just have to get the good grades. I volunteered for the Plano Symphony Orchestra. There’s just so much you have to do to stand out. Colleges take a look at your resume and they probably glance at that once. They look at your SAT and ACT which our parents didn’t have to take. Those scores alone could be the deciding factor on whether you get into a school or not but I don’t think those tests adequately test how special of a person you are. I mean someone could be really talented in music or something that those tests just don’t test and that’s why I think that schools use extra curricular activities so they can get a feel for who you are but if your SAT or gpa isn’t up there then you have to have done something really special to be considered.
Me: Right, and that wasn’t like that in previous years. My mom works in my school district and she even recognized how much the competition has come up just to get into college. It wasn’t nearly as bad back then. But do you think that having to go through all that, do as much stay as active, do you think that affected you positively?
Claire: Definitely. I would go to school from 9-4:15. The last hour was tennis practice. Then at 5 I would drive to tennis practice and I would leave at 8:30, get home at 9 eat dinner, do my homework, then go to bed. TV was basically none existent to me. This was probably junior year when its really hard, it’s the most important year. I basically had no life, even weekends I would spend studying and doing projects. It basically takes over because you just want to get into a good school.
Me: That’s a positive thing because you stay active but it could almost be a negative thing too because you don’t have any time to even sleep.
Claire: It is negative thing that we don’t have any time. A lot of kids these days compain they don’t have a life or get to do what they want because they are too busy studying. Basically their childhood or teenage years is being cut short, they aren’t able to have as much fun. Its just studying. A lot of them are very stressed, I know a lot of kids that spend hours and hours studying alone.
Me: Yes, and that just makes it difficult to fully develop socially because you have to be able to do that in the real world to get jobs.
Claire: Yes you do. You cant just sit behind a book. You have to meet people, make acquatiances. I am a journalism major like you and a very important skill is communication and if you're always at home studying then you aren’t going to have communication skills because you are going to be at home texting instead of talking to someone in person. You aren’t going to have that face to face communication and that is just going to hurt you. I know a lot of schools are now stressing the importance of group work to exercise that skill.
Me: that is smart. I know I have experienced older generations thinking we have it easier when, as we have discussed, we don’t. Have you ever experienced discrimination like that?
Claire: My parents think school is easier than it is. I took college algebra over the summer back in Texas because I knew it was hard here in Missouri and my dad, who is quite skilled in math he works with computers, he couldn’t help me with the math. I took it at home so I could have his help and a lot of times I just had to fend for myself because he didn’t rememnber or it wasn’t taught back in the day. And another thing, we have a lot to learn that doesn’t always necessarily apply to our major. I know I have to take math and science but I know I wont need most of that for journalism.
Me: Right, we are forced to learn and regurgitate a lot of information that we don’t need. The math, our parents didn’t have to learn all that like you said. We have had to fend for ourselves a lot in subjects that our parents didn’t have to do.
Claire: I know that since im not interested in some subjects, I just basically learn them, test over them, then through the information out of my mind. I don’t even know how to do math anymore because I took that last summer. I haven’t had math class and I don't need it so I don’t remember any math. So its not quite a waste of time but…
Me: I mean there's just too many other things to remember...
Claire: I could be taking journalism classes, doing things to better my communication skills.
Me: Right. Well, I myself have noticed that not only do I get discriminated against from older generations but just older grades here at Mizzou as well. Just interacting with juniors and seniors they just automatically think you are dumber then them because you are a freshman.
Claire: Well I think that just stems from high school. Even pre school kindergarden. I remember when I was a sophomore I called the freshman "fishes". I just kind of looked down on them. I don’t look down on you because you're in my grade, I know youre a year younger than me and if you weren’t in my grade I know I'd be like "hah, senior in high school".
Me: Right. That’s more of an understandable discrimination. That just comes more naturally. Well I think that what weve gained from this interview that we have now established it is a lot harder for people our age. People think we have it so easy we should be able to get grades, get our extra curriculars a lot easier than we do. They don’t realize the competition and I just think we are stereotyped for slacking off, parting, not doing as much as we actually do. Im glad I was able to sit down and establish this with you. It was great talking to you Claire Bulkeley.
Claire: You too.
