Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio

The Paisano

The true, the false and the manipulative ways students get out of homework

There are things in this world that sometimes we cannot control or prevent from happening. There is an accident on the highway, you are late to class and your assignment is late as well. Yet there are times when we can adjust things to our own benefit. You spent all weekend hanging out with friends and forgot to write an essay. You don’t stress because you know the professor will give you at least one more day to work on if you tell them you had been working all weekend. Yes, what I am talking about here is how today’s students not only know how to get their way but the way in which they do it. 

Today’s students are part of a sub group I’d like to call the ‘Manipulation Generation’, where these persons have spent a lifetime of trial and error obtaining the skill to modify occurrences of their life to fit to their liking. Every student by now should know the process and procedure to academic success; listen in class, take notes, do the work and pass the test. This idea is simple enough to follow, but maybe harder to follow through on. Remember though, today’s students are not only focused on school work in hopes of pursuing that later career. No, students today are boggled and hassled with the outside world of pressures and pleasures that consume the campus and college life. What would one choose more a day at the library or a day at the beach?  It is to be assumed they would pick the latter. Using the skills they have learned, the student may conjure up some sort of excuse or explanation as to why the schoolwork was not completed. Will they eventually do the work? Yes, but at their own time and leisure. Are they setting themselves up for a dangerous path of repetitive failure to comply with rules? Unfortunately, yes. If students keep on this course of manipulation without ever being reprimanded one day when a real event does occur will that be the day the professor says enough is enough I’m done with your lies. You have entered the “Peter and the Wolf” scenario. This is not to say you will be eaten alive, but you will have to suffer the consequences from this day forward of not being trusted and held accountable for your actions.

Overall, students should realize and take hold of this skill they possess but not use it for the forces of evil. Rather apply it to the art of persuasion in their character making them a much great force to deal with once they leave the comfort of college and enter the real world.

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