Walker, Garrett: Beloit List

The mindset of the students today and the faculty born before 1980 is different.  Even though we learn together we are sometimes still worlds apart. Coming from two time periods brings almost two completely different worlds together. That the older generation can teach the younger does makes me think that the faculty born before 1980 seem to understand their students more than the students understand them. If students were to be the teachers of the faculty I believe they wouldn’t be able to see into their minds. I also don’t believe they would understand faculty or their different ideals and morals. Also, students might not appreciate their accomplishments.

I believe that the rapid increase of technology is the cause of the differences between students and faculty. Instant coffee, instant noodles, instant messaging, and instant rates on car insurance, the list goes on and on. Faculty, on the other hand, grew up in a generation were they had to wait or it just didn’t happen. Whereas students today are used to hundreds of channels all the time, faculty only had three channels and those shut down after midnight. Faculty would have waited and saved for something and then bought it. Now, students just charge now and pay later. When some faculty were young, it was shameful to have a credit card and now everyone has one. The new generation of students has never had to wait on anything.  Technology has come to be the main thing that divides the faculty born before 1980 and today’s students. With its rapid acceleration it will be interesting to see if the gap between the next generation and today’s students will be as large.

The faculty born before 1980 had to drive down to the library check out a book, read it, and return it. Now, students can instantly download, from practically anywhere, an ever growing number of electronic books, read them anywhere, and then delete them when finished, all on a compact          page-sized screen. The same has come to pass with television, the Internet, video games, maps, and money. Now, the smallest amount of memory you can buy on an iPod is 4 GB that amount of memory blows the processing capabilities of the first computers out of the water. Furthermore, that memory now fits in your hand instead of taking up half a library.

The faculty born before 1980 grew up with the Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver while the students are familiar with Jersey Shore and MTV. Somehow both groups are still able to come together, both having much to learn from the other. Projecting into the future, if technology continues to proceed, the need for faculty will be obsolete. All will take online courses until they start to practice in their major field. Doctor’s, engineer’s, sciences, and other similar fields that require hands on experience will still need some face-to-face teaching. The faculty’s jobs will be run by people on computers. Students will send in in work via e-mail and never even see a class or even a book either. Technology, to me, has played the biggest role in the differences in the mindsets of the faculty born before 1980 and the students enrolled now.