l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 The Wussification is Complete: Two College Students Called Police and Sought
Counseling After Seeing a Mouse in Their Apartment
Jesus H. Christ, what the hell is wrong with these people?
A year ago I received an invitation from the head of Counseling Services
at a major university to join faculty and administrators for discussions
about how to deal with the decline in resilience among students. At the
first meeting, we learned that emergency calls to Counseling had more than
doubled over the past five years. Students are increasingly seeking help for
, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life.
Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because
her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought
counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The
latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap
for them.
Faculty at the meetings noted that students’ emotional fragility has
become a serious problem when in comes to grading. Some said they had grown
afraid to give low grades for poor performance, because of the subsequent
emotional crises they would have to deal with in their offices. Many
students, they said, now view a C, or sometimes even a B, as failure, and
they interpret such “failure” as the end of the world. Faculty also noted
an increased tendency for students to blame them (the faculty) for low
grades—they weren’t explicit enough in telling the students just what the
test would cover or just what would distinguish a good paper from a bad one.
They described an increased tendency to see a poor grade as reason to
complain rather than as reason to study more, or more effectively. Much of
the discussions had to do with the amount of handholding faculty should do
versus the degree to which the response should be something like, “Buck up,
this is college.” Does the first response simply play into and perpetuate
students’ neediness and unwillingness to take responsibility? Does the
second response create the possibility of serious emotional breakdown, or,
who knows, maybe even suicide?
Two weeks ago, that head of Counseling sent us all a follow-up email,
announcing a new set of meetings. His email included this sobering paragraph:
“I have done a considerable amount of reading and research in recent
months on the topic of resilience in college students. Our students are no
different from what is being reported across the country on the state of
late adolescence/early adulthood. There has been an increase in diagnosable
mental health problems, but there has also been a decrease in the ability of
many young people to manage the everyday bumps in the road of life. Whether
we want it or not, these students are bringing their struggles to their
teachers and others on campus who deal with students on a day-to-day basis.
The lack of resilience is interfering with the academic mission of the
University and is thwarting the emotional and personal development of
students.”
Back in my college days I saw plenty of kids who were wholly incapable of
functioning away from their parents and many dropped out. Some had to be
whipped into shape, so to speak, about how to survive on their own. Perhaps
it was my upbringing where I had to learn to fend for myself by the teen
years, and by the time college came around I was able to function as an
independent adult.
Maybe some kids are just too coddled and can’t handle simple things like
seeing a mouse. Parents, you need to allow your kids to grow and mature
before they get to college. Otherwise, they’ll become part of the victim
culture, emotional basket cases unable to handle the slightest criticism or
any of life’s other hurdles, without crawling into the fetal position. Let
them lean to fail, brush themselves off and try again.
We can’t survive as a nation of pussies. | T*********I
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