The end of the semester is rapidly approaching, and students will have to do more than the bare minimum in order to achieve honorable grades.
Straight As and shining grade point averages are the ideal for Dixie State University students, but as students’ time and energy are being exasperated, the quality of their work can be compromised.
Kelsie Watters, a senior communication major from Santa Clara, said she has witnessed fellow students producing lack-luster work, and it affects more than just the producer.
“It seems like people are just there to get their C+ or whatever it is for them to pass, and they’re not too worried about doing any more than that,” Watters said.
Watters said mediocrity is becoming the classroom norm.
“I think it’s really easy for professors to see through (bare minimum work),” Watters said. “I noticed some professors will try and reward better behavior, although it seems like it’s almost the norm to just kind of do as little as possible.”
Professors have methods to help ensure students are applying themselves in and out of the classroom. English department chair Randy Jasmine systematically designs his assignments to make sure students are doing genuine, hard work.
“I would think that professors would design their assignments so that you could (tell between doing the bare minimum and doing it thoughtfully),” Jasmine said. “It’s not a matter of trying to catch a student when they haven’t prepared as much as it is, ‘Hey, this is really important, and you need to look at it in a complex and in-depth way.’ If you haven’t prepared outside of class, then you’re not going to be able to do that.”
While Jasmine expects high-quality work and attention from his students, he also understands that many students have lives outside of the classroom that can compete with educational commitments.
“I very rarely have a student who I think is just a lazy student,” Jasmine said. “We have an unusual student body. We have a student body who many of them are married; many of them work full-time or nearly full-time jobs as well as going to school. So I think there are a lot of demands on those students.”
Assistant business professor Debra Bryant said students’ habits in school can foreshadow habits in other aspects of life.
“(Students who skim by) are setting bad standards for the rest of their life,” Bryant said. “If they think, ‘Oh this is just school and it doesn’t matter, and I’ll get on at a good job later,’ well it just doesn’t work that way. If you set bad standards now, when you get into work and you just try to get by, if you think your boss [doesn’t] know, then you’re fooling yourself.”
Bryant said bad followers will become bad leaders, and students need to be aware of the efforts they are putting into education in order to achieve overall success.
“I hate to jump to the conclusion that (doing the bare minimum work) says something about students morally, but whenever you compromise, you are doing something ethically compromising,” Bryant said. “And that’s not good for you to ever do that because it carries over in all different areas in your life.”
