The one thing that really got me really angry and so frustrated throughout this year was the fact that senior students treated us first years as the most irritating, naive and loud people in the world, forgetting that they too were in the very same position that we now in, a couple of years ago.
As a first year student you will obviously be excited to be coming to varsity for the first time and that you are now away from your parents and all forms of rules and regulations as to how to live your life. Therefore it’s only natural that we would be a little loud at the beginning of the year, well some are still in the pre-June examination stage of total excitement.You obviously going to get to varsity and meet new friends while being very excited to have met them and will most probably be going out every night for the rest of what’s left of Orientation week, hence not assuming that you automatically a dunked, you just letting your hair down if I may put it that way. Hence when you see the expressions of senior students on how first years drink one would swear they haven’t set a foot in a club, ironically you find that they are the very ones that make lecture venues smell like the processing flow of South African breweries on a Monday, Thursday and Friday mornings.
Then you get your ever loving tutors; now they are the people that are suppose to be feeling sympathetic towards us seeing that they get paid through us. Well it’s either you get the tutor that over simplifies everything which implies that we’re total morons and that you don’t know anything forgetting that you made it to “Rhodes University, Where leaders learn”, Or you get those that want to punish you for the fact that they had to sit at home and mark your essay while they had plans to go to the Rat &Parrot to get totally wasted. Now what these types of tutors do is just simply pretend to assume that you know every big, complicated word that comes out of their mouths.
Now lets not forget our lecturers, they are the nice ones during Orientation week when they are sucking up to you to choose to study whatever subject their Department Head sent them to come and sell to the naïve gullible first years that have just arrived. you offcourse buy into whatever they want you to buy into and then choose the subject, write an essay, fail it because you did not reference it using their ‘departmental style’, you go to the very same person that sold you the subject and they send you to your tutor. How are first years suppose to cope with all this?
Any first year student at this university has experienced at least one if not all of the above mentioned experiences. “Hey look at the bright side, we can do this to first years next year” said first year B.A student Athenlosi Matyalana. And so the vicious cycle goes on and on.
As a first year student you will obviously be excited to be coming to varsity for the first time and that you are now away from your parents and all forms of rules and regulations as to how to live your life. Therefore it’s only natural that we would be a little loud at the beginning of the year, well some are still in the pre-June examination stage of total excitement.You obviously going to get to varsity and meet new friends while being very excited to have met them and will most probably be going out every night for the rest of what’s left of Orientation week, hence not assuming that you automatically a dunked, you just letting your hair down if I may put it that way. Hence when you see the expressions of senior students on how first years drink one would swear they haven’t set a foot in a club, ironically you find that they are the very ones that make lecture venues smell like the processing flow of South African breweries on a Monday, Thursday and Friday mornings.
Then you get your ever loving tutors; now they are the people that are suppose to be feeling sympathetic towards us seeing that they get paid through us. Well it’s either you get the tutor that over simplifies everything which implies that we’re total morons and that you don’t know anything forgetting that you made it to “Rhodes University, Where leaders learn”, Or you get those that want to punish you for the fact that they had to sit at home and mark your essay while they had plans to go to the Rat &Parrot to get totally wasted. Now what these types of tutors do is just simply pretend to assume that you know every big, complicated word that comes out of their mouths.
Now lets not forget our lecturers, they are the nice ones during Orientation week when they are sucking up to you to choose to study whatever subject their Department Head sent them to come and sell to the naïve gullible first years that have just arrived. you offcourse buy into whatever they want you to buy into and then choose the subject, write an essay, fail it because you did not reference it using their ‘departmental style’, you go to the very same person that sold you the subject and they send you to your tutor. How are first years suppose to cope with all this?
Any first year student at this university has experienced at least one if not all of the above mentioned experiences. “Hey look at the bright side, we can do this to first years next year” said first year B.A student Athenlosi Matyalana. And so the vicious cycle goes on and on.
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In response to the opinion piece entitled Dam 1st year students, I would like to counter with a few points. I understand the protest to the assumed stereotypes and general lack of respect that first year student’s encounter. However, this argument falls prey to many contradictions, firstly the stereotype that first year students are ‘drunkards’ may be a huge generalization, but when broken down into pure statistics, the ratio of first year’s to senior students means that the majority of people that act inappropriately and “get wasted” will be first year students. Secondly, in regards to the objection to the lack of respect first year’s experience, statistics again make this behaviour understandable. “A shocking 40% of South African students drop-out of university in their first year, a major study has found”, which substantiates the behaviour of lecturers, tutors and senior students, who know the statistics of failure and drop-out rates, realizing that effort expended on all first years will be around 40% fruitless. The onus falls on first years to work to be in the other 60%. My final point of opposition, concerning first year treatment, rests on a study at Rhodes University which suggested “Senior students were likely to exert strong pressure to make them conform”, which is a sad truth about university relations, but simultaneously a real life lesson. This behaviour is reminiscing of realty, the world is a tough place, where people have to struggle and excel to succeed, and first year is preparation for this.
‘SisVic’
Although I agree with a lot of the elements you've conveyed in your piece on issues facing first years, I must say you've taken a rather exaggerated stance on our situation. In my personal opinion older students have made the transition from school to university smooth and almost issue-free! I believe it totally depends on the type of person someone is. If you've come to Rhodes believing that you can get away with being the person you were in matric then, yes, Rhodes is definitely going to be a huge wake-up call. In life you never reach the top and just stay there, there are always stages where you'll be start out a job at the bottom and work your way up. My most daunting experience was playing a sport for Rhodes with no other first years or be 'vulnerable' with, but it's worked out so well because half those girls are my bes friends today. Don't be so quick to presume you've 'arrived' now that you're out of school, take this as a learning experience and don't be like every other older student was to you, maybe make a difference to a first-year's live next year.
That the way life works! Having a little more life experience gives people reason to treat those younger then themselves like children. Age is an amazing thing that makes you think that you were a better first year. About the tutors I share you sentiments, but in the end it is not up to them to make you pass you are meant to keep up with everything any way to make sure that you pull through and don’t have to face first year a second time. The lectures at the end of the day have to get paid and that means getting as many vessels to take their class as possible. After making you buy all the expensive text books they now have money to buy bread and butter, giving them little reason to keep you from other things in life. my comment
I disagree with your argument that most first years are treated with disrespect by those higher than them. Read more at http://stilettossexandshooters.blogspot.com/
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