A Weird Observation I Noticed In The School of Engineering

The students are different and it is shocking!

Now when I say different I am not referring to the physical, although there is a lot of differences in that aspect as well (saving that for a rainy day), but rather on the emotional aspect.

It really comes down to behavior!

I spent a lot of time in other classes and schools, primarily the School of Business and it was not until I left this behind in pursuit of a major that fell into the School of Engineering realm was it that I realized how different this particular body of students are.

From my very first class, multiple students behaved in ways that demonstrated a lack of social awareness and that is being generous in my assessment since one could argue that the behaviors fall more in line with narcissism, autism or a personality disorder of some sort.

I will list some examples of what I transpired in my first class:

• The professor said the opposite of what was on the slide, but it was very straightforward and common knowledge for anyone. One student immediately cut him off without a hand raise and corrected him.
• We had to install a program. Now these can be tricky since people have different operating systems and laptops so I gave the student the benefit of the doubt when he ran into issues and asked the professor in the first two instances, but on the third I started to get irritated and by the time the fourth time — I was completely over it. Every single time he ran into an issue he would speak out and make the professor come over. The professor finally ended up telling him to discuss it with him after class.
• Professor walks through an example and asks the class if anyone could figure out the next step. One student answers and his answer is incorrect. Instead of just moving on, he started going back and forth with the professor.

It is not the actual acts in the examples that are odd is, but rather the frequency at which it occurs. It creates dysfunction and makes it impossible to get through the lesson for the day given the time constraint of a class.