# Why are these people at college?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-these-people-at-college/143313>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [December 17, 2002, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-these-people-at-college/143313 "2002-12-17T12:28:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2002, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-these-people-at-college/143313/41 "2002-12-19T22:43:05Z")

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Oh, let the guy blow off some steam.

**Dunmurry** , I sympathize with your frustration about some of your classmates. While it’s their business what they want to do with their time and who they want to consort with, I have had a few undergraduate students who seem to get pleasure from disrupting their classes. I welcome the few students at the other end of the spectrum who want to drink a cup of coffee with me and talk about their aspirations. I’d rather put a face with the name and have a student be more than a line of grades in spreadsheet.

I did a lot better as a student at a small college with a work-before-beer mentality than I did in high school. I also felt like I fit in better. Perhaps your college isn’t the right one for you.

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**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\
**Post date:** [December 20, 2002, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-these-people-at-college/143313/42 "2002-12-20T00:28:50Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by zimmdogg \*  
> \*\*Seems only fair, being as that I teach high school physics, and I had to take biology.
> 
> One thing to remember - Mark Twain said [and I’m paraphrasing] that at 18 he thought his parents were the most stupid people alive, and at 22 he was amazed at how much they had learned in 4 years. Take home point: they’re going to grow out of it. It’s a developmental fact that often those of higher IQ or academic ability will prefer the company of those older than themselves. You’re developmentally ahead of them, they’re at college cause that’s what their parent/society told them to do, and soon, you’ll find people more mature and focused like yourself, and the rest of the population will grow up or fail out. And that, my dear, is real life. Sigh. To be back in college… 🙂 \*\*

Point taken about the physics course. Although if biology wasn’t your main subject, at least I hope the professor somehow related it to what you were planning to do (or something in your daily life).

I hope in the second paragraph you are addressing **Dunmurry**. 🙂 My reply to him was trying to show that sometimes students complain about the classwork because they don’t see the usefulness of the material. Just because they complain doesn’t mean they are not intelligent, sharp, or that they are lazy scumbags.

**Crorex** , that was a great reply, even with the mess up coding. The craziest people I met worked at the lab… 😃

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