I failed a class in college on purpose. Not out of laziness or indifference but self-inflicted necessity. Working at The Observer consumed my waking hours to the point that I found myself in an embarrassing bind.
I needed to register for a minimum number of credit hours to maintain full-time student status, but I also needed to sleep. I took an F to get a few Zs.
Other than the grade, there were no consequences. As I recall, nobody even asked after the student who never showed. Not the professor, not an academic cop. Different times.
Students hold themselves to a much higher standard today. So much higher, in fact, that I questioned my own memory. Could I really have been that much of a deadbeat? I ordered my transcript — a lesson in verification I learned at The Observer — and the story checks out.
For many good reasons, I don’t think anything like that would happen now. Ghosting a class would prompt the professor and others either to offer support or demand accountability. Advisers probably would help students avoid such a predicament in the first place.
But the biggest difference I perceive is not in the administrative scaffolding that has been erected since then. It’s in the students themselves.
They assign themselves much more than I ever did, bound and determined to excel in every endeavor: impeccable grades, extracurricular leadership, coveted internships. When the subject comes up in courses I teach, they describe the overload almost as a requirement. To what end? To hedge their career bets. To ensure a return on the tuition investment. To prove they belong.
I got myself into trouble with the workload of an English major and that single extracurricular preoccupation. To today’s voracious collectors of majors and minors and much else they consider obligatory, that must sound featherlight.
Something has to give. But what? Rest? Relationships? Reflection? Those are just intangible enough to be sacrificed for more quantifiable accomplishments that serve as the external measure of an education.
The insidious risks of this situation are self-evident: compromised mental health from grade-point averages or job offers that determine self-worth; misplaced priorities such as amassing credentials over exploring curiosity; degraded learning, if not outright cheating, through frictionless technological shortcuts.
In this issue, philosopher Paul Blaschko ’18Ph.D., explores elite academic culture and its discontents. Notre Dame goes to considerable lengths to broaden students’ perspectives, to support their well-being while they’re here, and to prepare them to cultivate a flourishing life above and beyond the undoubtedly important matter of making a living. Examples of those efforts fill these pages as well.
Alums of a certain age like to talk about how we could never get in to Notre Dame today. Sometimes I sense an almost perverse pride in our self-deprecation, as if patting ourselves on the back for not taking our education as seriously as the young people whose achievements we celebrate in the next breath.
I’m ashamed I let things go to the point that failure felt like the only option. I’d love a college do-over, a chance to be more like students today with their laudable ambition and dedication.
But I wish they’d let up some, too. Not give up like I did — they would never — but between my condemnable faceplant and their commendable striving, there’s ample space for students to give themselves a little grace.
Jason Kelly is editor of this magazine.