College or Daycare? What difference does it make?

[Forty Two]

"A degree in Women’s and Gender Studies prepares you for almost anything. " https://wgs.tcnj.edu/for-students/caree ... wgs-major/

What Employers Want
Employers often seek out liberal arts graduates, knowing that a liberal arts education emphasizes critical thinking, writing, and presentation skills. A liberal arts degree shows an employer that you have studied a wide variety of topics and probably have a broader view of the world than other applicants. A Women’s and Gender Studies major provides all of these benefits and more:

Expertise in finding and using information on contemporary social issues
An understanding of differences of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and social class
Insight into the connections among different forms of oppression
A foundation for analyzing inequities and initiating change

[laklak]

I don't know what the answer is, or even if there is an answer, or if it needs an answer. I'm confused. I saw young adulthood as the greatest opportunity of my short life, I couldn't fucking wait to get out and DO shit. That's why I found myself, at the age of 23, pushing a 20 man survey crew across Northern Nigeria, running topo for the Kaduna-Kano highway and living in a pop-up trailer. I see the students in our area (we're right between two state universities), and find the idea of them eating "wild rabbit" (cane rat) on a stick absolutely hilarious.

There are certainly young people who have it sussed out, and who can take care of themselves. I know quite a few, but not one is a university student. They're mechanics, plumbers, divers, boat crew, roustabouts on offshore rigs, that sort of thing. They'd be dismissed out of hand by the Special Snowflakes, because they really don't give a shit about non-gendered pronouns, and most of them hunt, fish, own guns and do all sorts of non-social-justicey things. They give me hope for the future.

[pErvinalia]

This is just embarrassing.... http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29106/



College students: Just fucking go to class, do your fucking homework, and quit yer bitching!

Instead of wasting time coloring, do your fucking Calculus problems to "de-stress." Oh, wait, that's right, you're in "gender studies" so you identify as a pancake in your "otherkin" group and you're busy navel-gazing about whether your supergendered and whether you're cultural heritage is sufficiently oppressed to allow you to wear dreadlocks.

Destress, my ass. Fucking coloring books. Here's a stuffed animal, too, ya pansies.

I don't know why you let this sort of stuff wind you up so much. Just relax and accept that the world is moving on and you're too old and out of touch to move with it.

Yep. It's just the last throes of a conservative who can't handle people being different to him.

LOL - adults coloring with crayons to "destress" from a college curriculum that requires about 4 hours of study per week to ace? Yes, it's conservatives who can't handle "people being different."

I'm going to join them since I can't beat them -- just read the following with a slight lisp and a lilting upward-pitch at the end of each sentence -- "I'm sorrayh! But, pleaahse refer tah may as a non-gendered, non-binaray, otherkin moonbeam dragahn! Mah pronouns are anybody, everyone, many and neither! Now can you provide me mah publicly funded coloring book and crayons! The stress of mah 12 credits of gender studies is just soooo overwhelming! Another student came to class, sat down and said hello without mah consent!"

Yep. It's just the throes of a conservative who can't handle people being different to him.

[pErvinalia]

I have a couple of those, but my favourite is my Doctor Who one. I enjoy colouring, and find it relaxing. Seems like people just have to hate on everything

It's one thing if someone picks up a hobby on their own -- coloring books have been widely available for generations. I buy them for my three year old, sometimes for less than a dollar each. She destresses with them all the time.

The issue in the OP involves a college program for adults attending university. Color away your stress, they say, because, what? The 12 credits the average student takes in college is so difficult? What's so stressful? They hear opinions they don't like? They're over the age of 18 and their girlfriend broke up with them?

Obviously, someone with a clinical condition or other need will be seeking treatment from psychiatric professionals, but the run--of-the-mill college student is not among that group. It just seems rather ridiculous, and appears to be part of an overall coddling of "kids" well into adulthood. Scot Dutchy put it well above when he discussed how at 17 he was backpacking across Europe.

There has been a change in the zeitgeist over the last 40 or so years. I doubt we'd have a Woodstock today, because the 17, 18 and 19 year old attendees wouldn't be allowed out of the house for the weekend without a parent, and if they left on their own the police would become involved.

Some of this sounds like "too much time on one's hands." I mean, maybe make them take 18 credits, like a generation or so ago. Then they'll go to class for six hours a day and do homework for another six, and there won't be enough time to get all whinged out.

A conservative reminiscing about the good ol' days.

[pErvinalia]

I thought it might be interesting to take a gender studies course, and try to honestly learn and question everything that was taught, but it seems that, even if things went incredibly well, I would come out of it many dollars poorer, and no more employable.

In fact, I have seen candidates passed over - in a SOCIAL WORK environment - because their only education was Gender Studies and it just isn't practical for anything.

If they can't be employed in social work, where the fuck CAN they?

Their only education was Gender Studies? Where does one get these alleged degrees (or other qualifications) in Gender Studies?

[pErvinalia]

I thought it might be interesting to take a gender studies course, and try to honestly learn and question everything that was taught, but it seems that, even if things went incredibly well, I would come out of it many dollars poorer, and no more employable.

In fact, I have seen candidates passed over - in a SOCIAL WORK environment - because their only education was Gender Studies and it just isn't practical for anything.

If they can't be employed in social work, where the fuck CAN they?

An employer can rest assured that a "studies" student will most certainly know how to complain, for one.

Irony meter explosion.

[Forty Two]

You raving shitlord, you! I demand you refer to me by my pronouns, and I don't identify as conservative! That's racist! I'm an otherkin moonbeam dragon.

Take your hatespeech outta this forum!
Take your hatespeech outta this forum!
Take your hatespeech outtta this forum!

[pErvinalia]

Take your medication.

[Forty Two]

Take your medication.

[laklak]

Oh noes! Another Special Snowflake is terminally offended! Ze is vewy vewy angry about a tasteless and offensive mural painted in the Laux Residence Hall at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, and has reported it to the schools "Hate Response Team" (yes, they have a Hate Response Team).

The mural

represents our ideal society and everything I am trying to fight against. It represents white power. Man power. Cis power. Able power. Class power. ECT [sic] ect. I am angry that I know the people who put this mural up, and I am anger [sic] because I know the people who let this mural be put up. Like I said earlier, maybe I am being a little sensitive, but it is how I feel. This represents, to me, our society, and I do not want it up on this wall. Why do we need a BEFORE and AFTER?”

Why that is just TERRIBLE! Not just white power, but white CIS able class man power! (and "ECT" power, though I admit I'm not up to snuff with the current power structure vernacular) The poor, poor thing, it wouldn't surprise me if ze had to spend the next 3 or 4 years coloring!

The offending mural, with trigger warning. BE CAREFUL! THIS COULD SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOU!!!!!!

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Apparently, the rather nerdy fellow on the left has been transformed into the much more hunky fellow on the right, due to time spent at the Laux Residence Hall. I am sure all you right thinking folk will join me in condemning this unforgivable act of Social Injustice!

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/09/26/un ... mural.html

And don't worry, snugglekittens, you're not being overly sensitive. It's the big, bad, mean world that doesn't understand just how special you really are!

[Brian Peacock]

...
The issue in the OP involves a college program for adults attending university. Color away your stress, they say, because, what? The 12 credits the average student takes in college is so difficult? What's so stressful? They hear opinions they don't like? They're over the age of 18 and their girlfriend broke up with them?

My take is what stresses other people is their business not mine - but that doesn't mean I have to remain deaf to their concerns, however seemingly trivial. Moralising over who should be stressed, by what, and to what extent doesn't get one very far - and generally comes across as an absence of personal insight, compassion or empathy etc. I mean, my Mum really has nothing to be stressed about if my Dad drives at 1mph above the speed limit - but nonetheless it is the source of real anxiety ever since she was involved in a minor road traffic incident. My Dad, to his credit, tempers his own frustration at being told to slow down by the knowledge that stressing my Mum out for 3 hours isn't good for her, or him. Now, if college students are exposed to and/or experience prolonged stress then that obviously has the potential to impact on their academic achievements - so regardless of whether I think they're being pussies or not it doesn't seem out of order for an educational institution to acknowledge it or to try remedies that aim to do something about it about it. One might even say that if students are stressed then their educational institutions have some duty of care to acknowledge it, at the very least - particular the younger students with the least experience of life. Of course, I'm from a generation that didn't acknowledge stess; we just didn't do it; we didn't even 'believe' in it as a real thing; acknowledging it was considered a sign of namby-pamby personal weakness; etc. Instead we just pressed our social and academic anxieties down into a tight black knot at our core, pretended everything was alright, and went to the pub to get pissed and laugh at the wimps who's parents had to come and take them out of university. I'm not suggesting a bit of colouring-in is going to 'cure' a young person of their stresses, but it at leasts creates a forum where stresses can perhaps be identified and acknowledged - with a view to addresses them in a more substantive manner.

[JimC]

Agreeing with some of what you say, Brian, but also thinking it is possible that, by seeming to make "being stressed", even at very low levels something that needs a program of some sort to solve it, that we may be creating a generation with low levels of personal resilience, and a tendency to need problems solved for them.

[Brian Peacock]

Agreeing with some of what you say, Brian, but also thinking it is possible that, by seeming to make "being stressed", even at very low levels something that needs a program of some sort to solve it, that we may be creating a generation with low levels of personal resilience, and a tendency to need problems solved for them.

I don't disagree Jim, but (!) getting a good perspective on one's own stresses - knowing what's worth getting stressed about so to speak, and what's piffle etc - is something that comes easier with experience. Yeah, some students might be getting stressed about relatively minor stuff, but nonetheless they're not going to stop being stressed just by being told to 'Pull your bloody socks up' or by being ridiculed. I don't necessarily see this as educational institutions creating a generation with low levels of personal resilience more as an example of one that's trying to deal with that generation - with its causes being more complicated than can be pinned on the presumed personal failing of the individuals or the 'They just don't know they're born' grumbling of us more experienced and enlightened prime-of-lifers.

[pErvinalia]

Agreeing with some of what you say, Brian, but also thinking it is possible that, by seeming to make "being stressed", even at very low levels something that needs a program of some sort to solve it, that we may be creating a generation with low levels of personal resilience, and a tendency to need problems solved for them.

No one is forcing them to colour in.

[pErvinalia]

One thing to remember is that EVERY adult generation has whinged about how soft their kids are. 42 and Lak Lak's generation were soft little petals compared to their parent's generation. Basically, this is just old people whinging because the world is leaving them by.