Opinion Page

Low Self-Expectations Among Students

By Kelsey Cole

“What did you think of the convocation?” questions a typical teacher to her class.

“It was boring…It was horrible…It was too difficult to understand…” might be among some of the answers received.

“Well, how do you think the speech could have been better delivered?”

“They shouldn’t have used such big words…It wasn’t directed towards our education level…It should be on a more interesting topic…”

I know I’ve heard these answers many times in my classes and from casual side conversations. But I believe the problem doesn’t lie with the speaker on many accounts but in fact lies with the audience.

Before those students enter the chapel doors, there is a negative air about their expectations because it is something they are forced to attend where there is a person blabbing during the precious time they could be sleeping. This negative outlook on something that hasn’t even happened yet negates any beneficial result they may receive than if they had anticipated grand ideas to reverberate off the walls. Although, setting the standard of the speaker close to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. is probably stretching it.

Yet, even when students expect a speech to be informative and purposeful they manage to miss the main points stated. This is so because students tend to doubt their own intellectual ability to understand and pick out these key points at the moment the speaker uses one word they are unable to understand. This is where the “too smart to comprehend” attitude towards the convocation derives from. This underestimation of a student’s own capabilities causes frustration then giving up on receiving anything of value. They tend to block out the whole speech instead of a word or statement they may be unable to comprehend.

Although, I do understand that there is typically always some part in a speech that seems to drag on and on. I catch myself drifting off sometimes into the recesses of my mind but I do bring myself back and focus in on the speaker and then realize the magnitude of their ideas and what they are saying ain’t too shabby.

“It’s good for people to hear about these different topics and realize that they are important,” said freshman Amber Bohns. “Yet, with the civic engagement convo., it was hard for me to get interested in [the speaker’s] personal stories. I did like the overall idea of the speech, though.”

What these students need to do is challenge their academic comfort zone in order to continue climbing up the educational ladder. They should try to immerse themselves in the most basic form of teaching, that being a lecture, and force themselves to extract valuable information from it. They should be intent on listening to a well thought out and, interestingly enough, info-rmative speech. These speeches were not simply set up for the purpose of annoying students nor were meant to provide a day off for the ILA teachers having to teach class (they save that for student led discussions and presentations).

Who knows, perhaps the next time there is an uncomfortable silence you can break it by recalling out loud that one speaker’s experience with gunk in his ear. You never know…you never know.