An open textbook with, classically, nothing written on a student’s notepad. Photo by: Harry MacKenzie
After World War II, Congress passed the G.I. Bill which placed millions of veterans in academic institutions. Since then, college students—today, notorious for blasting music from their headphones, tossing dusty Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer, and sleeping until noon—have been mastering an art that educators don’t seem to be keen on fostering in the classroom: procrastination. Why can’t students add this special talent to the “skills” section of our résumés? Wouldn’t employers cherish the high levels of productivity recent college grads could offer? They could handle twice the workload today’s average employee can handle, accomplish small tasks with ease, and save the biggest tasks until the morning they’re due.
A research paper assigned via a professor’s syllabus. Photo by: Connor Levens
This level of cleverness continues to be pioneered by Generation Z today, and we never fail to draw our attention to it. The only caveat? Research papers. Unlike those assigned by English and history professors and the like, any quality research paper deserving of a high grade requires extensive legwork that obligates students to spend several days and grisly nights scavenging for relevant facts and information about the topic in question. To make matters worse, each source requires proper citation in MLA or APA format properly summarized in a bibliography or “Works Cited.”
If this wasn’t taxing enough on each student’s duty to let loose on Thursday nights, the professors who assign these papers add insult to inquiry by requiring them to use multiple databases sponsored by some sort of library or collection. Yet, this doesn’t help if they fail to explain how to efficiently use these resources, which are anything but user-friendly.
Student struggle to find relevant information via their college’s overly-vast resources. Photo by: Connor Levens
To be clear, there are a handful of instructors who demonstrate to their students where to find these databases, how to access them, and how to run a general search. But “general” searches, returning millions of search results, transform students into hunters and gatherers—a moniker which expired 300,000 years ago.
Why can’t professors teach students how to narrow down millions of reports by using “AND / OR” operators, helping demolish irrelevant information? What about teaching them how to exclude key words and variables from their searches? And when to use quotations marks?
Imagine the amount of time that could be save while more could be spent writing the actual paper.
Without knowing how to accurately explore these enormous databases, aren’t students destined to spend much too great of their time rummaging through redundant pieces of information? Colleges that are willing to take the steps to fund valuable, quality, high-volume resources are obligated to give lessons on making specific search queries, and just because it will wind up promoting further procrastination shouldn’t make a bad thing.
