A campus of self-entitled twerps
Ah, generalisations. Almost as odious as comparisons. It would probably have been fairer to title my piece "a campus of some self-entitled twerps".
Sadly, however, the latest piece of genius thinking to emerge from Tal-Qroqq – courtesy of Anonymous Student, does it get any more hilarious? – is pretty symptomatic of the attitude of quite a number of today's particular brand of students.
The same students who, not to put too fine a point on it, appear to be a bunch of wusses. Apparently, being cocooned in an array of smartphones, tablets and laptops - while still somehow emerging from university barely literate - was only the first step towards achieving official "spoilt brat" status.
Now, the tax-paying public also gets to put up with complaints that "lectures are excruciatingly boring". All this because a lecturer dared pull the plug on in-lecture Facebook browsing via email, if you please.
I can just picture the scene of devastation: "Oh noes, I can't like the latest inane comment posted by some chick or other. Call in the folks from Amnesty International, quick!"
When I first wrote on this blog that our university is producing a bunch of dunces (read whole post here: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120316/blogs/the-dunces-of-europe.411392) I was taken to task pronto.
Shame on me for daring criticise what has become the typical students' self-entitled mentality. And shame on me for pointing out their non-endearing habit of pulling a Ptolemy, thinking that everything revolves around them and their needs.
What price indignation now that we're faced with the ridiculous situation of students behaving like kids who want to pay back their parents for punishing them? Lecturer takes away your toys? Simple – publicly call him out as a boring old fart and it's sorted.
Here's some news. Those who go places don't do so by stamping their feet and blaming a poor attention span on their lecturer. Those who go places do so in spite of the "boredom" of a particular lecture. And they certainly manage to get there even without their laptops.
More news. Boredom is an integral part of life, deal with it. Maybe your parents forgot to point out the fact that once you hit sixteen - sometimes even before, if you're particularly unlucky - life tends to switch mode from perpetual roses to part awesome/ part crap/ part sheer ennui.
Well-adjusted adults who can function in society rise above it. Others whine, pull tantrums and blame their lack of drive on lecturers or on the absence of Facebook, Tumblr and Miniclip.
Our bored student needs to re-think his definition of pathetic. Pathetic is a very appropriate description indeed, but it's not the lecturer's offending email that I have in mind.
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Mark Cassar
May 13th 2012, 23:28
To Mr Stephen Farrugia reading second year philosophy, even if you are right re some of the lecturers, your disrespect for others to put forward your argument shows the poor level of the students attending Malta's Uni and how the Uni seems to have lost its way, and you Mr Farrugia lost your argument.
To Mr Neil Bugeja, at your age and those of your ilk, inspiration should come from within; you shouldn't need lecturers for that. If you find it in a lecturer its a bonus.
Stephen Farrugia
May 18th 2012, 02:38
Wrong, I'm just defending myself against the accusations of sore people with no fear.
Stephen Farrugia
May 18th 2012, 02:46
I didn't disrespect others Mr Cassar, I disrespected the foul hate speech that there is in this comment. What I said was not disrespectful, but a mirror of the infamity that Miss Depares has said. Of course, you have your own opinion, but no, my argument stands. The counterargument you proposed is a slippery slope, which is ineffective and logically inconclusive. Also, in respect to your generalization of the "poor level of the students attending Malta's university" , In what way is it disrespctful to say the truth? Why should students go to the majority of the lectures and having a great and well prepared lecture, and go to others with the lecture reading from THE SAME NOTES HE WROTE IN 1992...............Whilst Other lecturers wake up at 5am to do lecture notes, and send you research papers, and all that... I'm talking about the level of university being a level of "I finished studying, I have my notes ; all I have to do is just recite some difficult words, read my notes and that's it".
Raphael Coppini
May 13th 2012, 17:24
two extremely well written but utterly useless articles ms. depares.while i agree that there are students who are utterly useless for any number of reasons, most of these students are weeded out after the first or second year and do not usually graduate, unless the course is arbitrary. have you ever seen a maths a-level exam? if the statistic that you mentioned (and didn't even quote a figure for), is based on the pass rate, it could very well be that the exams are just too difficult. speaking for myself, when i sat for my maths a level a year ago i got a C. when i sat for the AQA equivalent about a month later i got an A, this kind of improvement was common among my peers. in fact the reason that we sat for the AQA exam is because its so much easier than the national exam. an opinion is nothing and without any actual facts to back it up, or any constructive criticism, does not change anything.
Mr ALBERT LEONE GANADO
May 12th 2012, 22:51
Having lectured at University for a long period of time I am all in favour of laptops and tablets in the lecture room as well as the introduction of other technological teaching aids which ease the task of students following lectures. Why should students have to write in longhand if with a bit of training they can key in notes in digitlized form which can later be easily transcribed , ordered or printed and perhaps even passed on a pen drive to other students who for one reason cannot attend a lecture. If only we had the latest technological white boards in all the lecture rooms all our jottings could be easily transferred directly to the student's laptop. As all lecture rooms have wifi I sometimes find that the more interested students look for references on the net on what I am lecturing about and this helps 2-way class interaction.
Of course many students especially those in the back rows use their laptop for surfing the net. I see nothing wrong in this this provided they do not disturb the rest of the class or bring the lecture into disrepute by viewing porno sites. For let us admit the following:
(i) We tend to over lecture our students and I think t is mentally impossible to sit down for seven hours a day without mental tiredness creeping in unless periodically you distract yourself or daydream. I used to be against students drinking or eating their lunch during my lectures but now I realize that it is often the only time they have available.
(ii) The truth is that when I attend lectures, seminars or conferences I always carry my laptop. Like the students I often find my mind straying . Material we deliver to students cannot all be interesting and exciting and anyway a lecture in distinction to a lesson should be a guiding path to assimilate new concepts. I personally often find my mind straying to other problems , however as soon as something interesting is said in the room my mind just wakes up to the interesting point. I know many students who adopt the same approach to relieve mental tiredness or boredom. It is perhaps time to have some of our lectures transmitted online live so that students can follow them from home or from some open space on campus and not have to spend interminable hours stuck in a lecture room. What makes something boring or exciting is often the surroundings it is received in.
Neil Bugeja
May 12th 2012, 18:59
"in-lecture Facebook browsing via email"....really? Facebook browsing via email? I don't know what type of technology might reach your stuck-up and egotistic hole you might have crawled out of, but that's not how Facebook works!!
Do you honestly have nothing better to do with your life than criticise the university students you are so jealous of? It's not our problem lecturers cannot bother to care about the students, so why should we care about the lecturers' feelings if they see we're not paying attention?
After all, if the lectures were decent, we'd pay attention!
We go to University to get an education, not to be put into an induced coma
Andrew Agius
May 15th 2012, 09:27
" I don't know what type of technology might reach your stuck-up and egotistic hole you might have crawled out of"
Well that about sums our University students up... Petty poor use of the English language.
I work in an international industry here in Malta and, alas, Maltese University students simply don't have half the level of education as the other Europeans (Italy and Greece excepted).
One thing our graduates do have is a massive self-belief, sadly one that is totally unfounded.
We need to get the basics right, when the Swedes and Germans in my office are astonished and amused at the ridiculous mistakes made by their Maltese colleagues in what is one of our official languages then what hope do we have?
Antoine Vella
May 12th 2012, 12:50
Stephen Farrugia, you do well to protest for you have been wronged. All those years of expensive schooling and nobody taught you how to express yourself coherently so that you now embarass yourself with your own inarticulations.
"I'm mistaken whether your articles . . . "? "just like your post nonetheless . . ."? "makes you a dangerous pen in your own eyes . . ."? These are just a few gems, mined at random.
And you're a second year philosophy student, too. There must be some mistake.
Stephen Farrugia
May 18th 2012, 02:49
Inarticulations? the Grammar is correct... check your facts first Mr vella
Reuben Zammit
May 23rd 2012, 23:38
His opinion could be expressed better in that piece, and contains a couple of minor grammatical mistakes easy enough to make, but over all it passes muster. It's actually better than the English many lecturers at University use.
Reuben Zammit, M.A. (Warwick), B.A. *(hons) in English & Comparative Literature
Matthew Vella
May 12th 2012, 11:51
Okay just two points:
First of all, laptops aren't 'toys'. They aren't devices simply used for facebook. They aren't some frivolous little toy people waste time on. Idiotic dinosaurs think that thats all they're used for.
Secondly, there's nothing wrong with criticizing lecturers. Yes, many of the lecturers are terrible. They know their subject through and through, but don't know how to lecture to save their life. Clicking through a powerpoint and reading means you might know the subject, but not how to lecture. Students SHOULD complain about lecturers, that doesn't make you spoilt.
I actually thinks its reasonable for a lecturer to ban laptops being used, but to criticize this student for calling this lecturer out on his amateur style of lecturing is unfair.
Stephen Farrugia
May 12th 2012, 10:08
And for the comments of the people below...
You don't even KNOW what goes on in university, but from posts from ugly women and sex-deprived men who spend hours on the PC with no reason or rhyme..
Come to university, go to the library... check out what's going on , since you're so glorious and good at discriminating, come see for yourself what goes on in the university, and I'll assure you, you'll understand what I'm talking about, and what Miss/Mrs/Sister Depares is all about...
C. Muscat
May 14th 2012, 11:58
You are assuming all the bloggers who see right through your ilk (spoiled students - not all students) did not receive a tertiary education and never set foot on campus.
Stephen Farrugia
May 18th 2012, 02:40
No Mr.Muscat, I'm just saying that even though they received Tertiary Education, they are not currently seeing what is going on in University.
Stephen Farrugia
May 12th 2012, 10:02
Ramona Depares,
I've read both articles. I'm mistaken whether your articles are just plain generalization against the concept of being not yourself, or just an ego show to tell us that you have once opened a dictionary and found a couple of words.
I am a student in University myself , my name is Stephen Farrugia, and just so you know how much I'm not afraid of you, I'll tell you that I'm a second year student following a course in Philosophy, so feel free to come see me in class whenever you like, and I WILL show you what students do.
Being behind a desk, writing nasty comments about students just because you cannot afford a smartphone (Which vodafone are selling for just 69 euros, so pretty poor I guess..) doesn't give you the right to generalize on students. Just because you, have 17 and 18 year olds on your facebook, because that would be the only reason why you see these 'posts' and 'comments, doesn't mean you KNOW what students do.
let me give you some insight on what happens in class. Lecturers that have been lecturing for years at the university and CAN'T teach, spend an hour on an ego-show, just like your post nonetheless, telling us about this and that, and clearly not teaching, but preaching - just like when we were kids and we went to church not knowing what the hell the priest was on about . some of us still don't! ... so what we do, instead of dying of boredom because the lecturer told us that "he will take attendance" , we go on facebook, or we research things ourself - time is precious, especially if you spend an hour in a lecture theatre circling around the same bloody point for an hour... which you could have easily done in 1 minute of studying.
So basically, yes.. you are right in saying that students do that, and call lecturers boring.. but you are wrong in judging them.
From this post, i can clearly say you're the student's pet that stays in front, and if someone drops a pen, you're the first one to shush them because you're an arrogant brat with some years added on, which makes you a dangerous pen in your eyes,
but in my eyes... you're still a sore woman, probably middle aged - who instead of looking at what happened in your life to be such a mean woman, you delight in pursuing your egomaniac approaches.
So , please - for the love of god, get a life, and smell your own stench.
Mr L Vella
May 12th 2012, 10:01
It appears everyone has forgotten about internet rule no. 14.
Stephen Farrugia
May 18th 2012, 02:48
"Do not argue with trolls - It means they win"
Mary Mills
May 11th 2012, 21:56
B.Camilleri: Did I mention what goes on in rooms?
No, it was handling money from loans (thousands of pounds of debt, many end up on finishing a degree - there were Local Authority grants once, but no more since `1997 - replaced by a students' loan co.) and being responsible (or irresponsible, if you like) to spend it mostly on necessities, a lot of them specially those whose parents can't help financially.
Don't know in which college in the UK you did your summer course and how well-off students attending a summer course might have been; myself (Maltija, jiena), I know re business of money, living away from home, and that certain amount of growing up - not least through the experience of my own children's education, here.
Raphael Coppini
May 13th 2012, 17:02
while i completely agree with you that students abroad become maturer, faster, because of the reasons that you mentioned, it is not relevant to the point at hand. as a first year university student our tuition is free (for which we are all grateful). the reason that this is so,in my opinion, is that if tuition fees at the university of malta were close to that of foreign universities, students might opt to study abroad instead of here. as the system is it is preferable to do a first degree here then specialise abroad. having said this the fact that ms.depares went on that (using the word to its fullest significance) rant based on a comment in a blog and on a statistic which she went into absolutely no detail about, gives me the impression that she has a chip on her shoulder for some reason.
Rachel Farrell
May 11th 2012, 18:37
However, I know plenty of students who, like me take their studies very seriously and show utmost respect to their lecturers. Doing a BSc in Maths in CSAI we do have lecturers who do not let us use laptops, yet nobody ever complained online!
B Camilleri
May 11th 2012, 16:15
I found this rather amusing and funny. The so called 'self-entitled twerps' will be paying the taxes to provide you with a pension later in the future (if not currently). I wouldn't make such sweeping statements if I were you.
Francis Saliba M.D.
May 11th 2012, 17:28
@ B Camilleri.
Unless they profit from their university education, they will not be paying any due taxes willingly to provide anybody with a pension. With their mentality, they will only pay those taxes that they do not succeed in evading - just as today they are not showing any evidence of making good use of the taxpayers money being allocated to provide them with an education that should turn them into useful, decent citizens, not semi-literate twerps who had wasted their time in the lecture room participating in facebook nonsense instead of listening attentively to lectures.
Mary Mills
May 11th 2012, 16:07
Kelly Dent: My point is about the difference between students' experience of 'being a student' in Malta or somewhere where universities are usually far from home; in other words, a comparison about what university might be as a maturing factor.
B Camilleri
May 11th 2012, 16:19
I've had the opportunity of studying abroad for a summer in a college in England. The stuff that goes on in fraternities, sororities and college/uni apartments is hardly what you'd describe as being the epitome of maturity. Mature people remain mature, immature people are still immature. You might think there's some great difference but at the end of the day it boils down to the person you are.
Luke Formosa
May 11th 2012, 15:43
Is it "moan about university students" week this week?
How did I miss the announcement?
L Zerafa
May 11th 2012, 15:34
No matter! This whole business of not letting students use their (or 'there' as you would say) laptops during lectures is nonsense. As a self-entitled twerp myself, I am more qualified to talk about my persecuted clan, and I, like most, use my laptop to take copious notes during lectures. A bit silly, I know. Who'd have thought self-entitled twerps would actually take notes during lectures? We've come along way from a chisel and hammer, haven't we?
The only problem with free tuition is that if you complain, you're seen as ungrateful, rude, deluded and, most angrily, not aware of the tax payers' contribution to your tuition. As customers to a service, you would think that it was your right to receive a good level of quality but beggars can't be choosers!
I really don't know who you think you are, Ramona Depares, to write such a distasteful article, but I suggest you talk to some lecturers at university and you'll find that most are indeed satisfied with student behaviour..
And also, justifying a boring lecture is a bit medieval. If my lecturer comes in and all he or she does is read off slides (albeit with many pretty colours) I will be very disappointed.
Yours self-entitledly,
Tax-paying student (twerp, you would say).
Steve Gruppetta
May 11th 2012, 15:06
Dear Ramona,
You truly do not have the full picture at your disposal.
Firstly, there are 2 types of boredom here:
1. Subject boredom, which is where the subject is just plain boring. I believe Uni students accept this and handle it well, judging by the number of students who graduate each year.
2. Lecturer boredom, where some lecturers at the university are just plain incompetent at teaching, making the subject dull and rendering attendance at the lecture useless (which is why some do not attend all lectures as they prefer using their time wisely studying at home).
I can assure you that most of us (as I am a student myself) handle both types of boredom, but is it fair to impose the second type of boredom on us unnecessarily? In fact, I have had a few really good lecturers who were even able to reduce 'subject boredom' with their teaching methods.
You should be appealing for adequate investment in teaching skills rather than demoralize students. God only knows how much teaching skills at the university are lagging.
Get your facts straight before you start judging others.
Steve.
Maryann Borg
May 11th 2012, 14:59
What we may be missing here is a fundamental change to the way young people function these days. It is normal for a student to study while , every few minutes, they check their face book home page. It is normal to watch an entertaining film, and at the same time play a game on their computer. This split attention is often split into even more pieces...talking with friends (again often thru' facebook chat) listening to music...all at the same time.
Most young people manage all this reasonably well...except when it comes to studying. But the self-disciple it takes to not check your whatever for new messages is beyond many. When it comes to lectures they may be able to just about keep up the half listening to what the lecturer is saying...but forget class interaction and critical assimilation of the material presented. University becomes just "school" again!
Emmanuel Buttigieg
May 11th 2012, 15:14
Please don't generalise. Last year, at Junior College, I would take my laptop with me to Computing (duh!) and Philosophy. I would type what the lecturer is speaking about at that moment in time, taking further notes and examples as I go along.
When I'm done I would sit back, take my hands off the keyboard, and listen to what the others are saying in class. Unfortunately, if a lecturer simply walks into the class, sits at his desk, opens the textbook and starts droning on in a monotonous whine, it isn't really our fault if we get distracted.
Fortunately, I haven't had such teachers. My friends, on the other hand, have.
Maryann Borg
May 11th 2012, 18:38
Emmanuel you did not respond to what I wrote...Are students in general addicted to whatever entertainment their computer can offer...or is my impression wrong? Do students try and do two or three things at the same time and does that impact their concentration and ability to interact meaningfully in class?
I do not deny that there are students who do not do this and I'm glad you are not one of them...I only want to point out a trend.
Emmanuel Buttigieg
May 11th 2012, 20:32
My reply was to show that not all students find it hard focus all your attention away from the distractions of.the internet and social media. This, however, changes if the lecture is simply boring and nit exciting, where the lecturer does not attempt to engage the students at all.
My ultimate point was to nit generalize, though in retrospect your generalization is milder than what I thought it was.
Emmanuel Buttigieg
May 11th 2012, 14:49
Here's a meme http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/200/420/BRTky.jpg
For those of you unfamiliar with the subject, that's Neil deGrasse Tyson. Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Danny Jensen
May 11th 2012, 14:46
I just lost a little more faith in humanity by reading this.
So, from what I've been able to gather, you're essentially saying that students are illiterate, spoiled brats who find their lectures boring and are unable to spend a day without going on social networks or staying away from a laptop or computer in general?
I'm sure you're right. Yes, people study extremely hard to get into medicine, law and a vast amount of other specialized areas because they are illiterate, undisciplined and have no will to work. Yes, of course.
Surely I need not point out, apart from how weak this article is, that you should perhaps consider not to take what a minority students say to be the general idea.
You mention generalization yourself. You ought to think more before writing.
- From a 18 year old, apparently illiterate, student who's aiming to enter medicine next scholastic year (is my spelling that bad?)
Emmanuel Buttigieg
May 11th 2012, 14:51
18? Entering Univerity? Me too!
After a wipe the drool accumulating at the side of my mouth that is. 'Cause I'm a spoilt, bored, self-entitled brat.
//Sarcasm
Emmanuel Buttigieg
May 11th 2012, 15:00
My bad.
*I, not a
kathleen Parsons
May 11th 2012, 14:29
Dear Ramona,
What a gutsy argument you have written .Your use of slang is highly admirable and appropriate to describe university people who are of course ,twerps. The laptops in fact are never used for note taking, or googling additional info about the lecture. This is of course reflected in their results. I have heard that UOM will soon close down since nobody seems to be passing from the yearly exams. This article shows an utterly disappointing dilemma that we now are facing .Due to your record of insurmountable diplomatic articles, we have no choice but to trust this epic piece of writing. May everyone take you as seriously as I do .
With Regard,
(Not so anonymous) Kathleen.
C Fenech
May 11th 2012, 14:15
So students are complaining that lectures are boring huh. Since when was the university about being entertained?
kathleen Parsons
May 11th 2012, 15:11
yeah dude,I have no idea when THE university was about being entertained!
L Zerafa
May 11th 2012, 15:36
The opposite of boring is not entertaining, but interesting.
I Borg Cardona
May 11th 2012, 13:59
Dear Ramona,
You mad?
Love,
A University Student
Malcolm Mizzi
May 11th 2012, 13:56
all hail the self entitled know it all =] I wonder when was the last time you attended a lecture since in my experience its really hard to find a decent lecturer
B Camilleri
May 11th 2012, 13:11
I agree to a certain extent, some students do have a 'spoilt attitude' but I find making sweeping statements like to be highly unprofessional. People that enter courses with that type of attitude hardly make it past their first year, let alone eventually graduate so the tax-paying community can put their mind at rest.
Not to mention that it's not the first time I've seen mature post-graduates nodding off during an evening lecture or tapping away at their laptop doing anything but taking notes. If a lecturer or a teacher for that matter does not want to be there and does not show the least bit of interest you can't entirely blame the student for being bored. Rioting over the laptop ordeal was immature, agreed. But you can't make sweeping statements rendering the students to be 'bored and uninterested'. I've been in some lectures which I've really enjoyed but I've been to an equal amount of lectures which I've utterly hated. Not all lecturers like their job and that very evidently affects the lecture.
N Saliba
May 11th 2012, 13:05
I tend to disagree. While some students who might be in uni for the wrong reasons might use their laptops and devices for social networking purposes, others who are actually interested in what they're studying use them simply to take notes. I have been to numerous lectures when I was a student where the lecturer would be talking so fast that had I been writing notes the traditional way, using pen and paper, I wouldn't have managed to capture even half of the gist of what the lecturer would be saying. I'm sure there are others like me who type faster than they write, so why shouldn't we be able to do so?
I also was lucky enough to have some lecturers that would make their credit one which students would look forward to. These are lecturers who take in feedback and if something is not right, they'll try their utmost to change it and make it more interesting for their students. Every semester, emails are sent out to students to give feedback about the credits and the lecturers. Is this feedback actually being evaluated? In certain cases, I highly doubt it. Lecturers that keep their same method for 20 years plus are not doing their job right. And this goes for everything in life. Everything needs to progress. Some lecturers still use the same dated notes year after year. The proof? Check the copyright date in the footnote. In certain cases, they'd be so old, they still use transparencies! Countless amounts of research and new discoveries happen every year. So failure to update notes, and yet again teaching methods, is ridiculous. Another example. One lecturer in particular would send us the notes after every lecture and all the students still turned up for the lectures because they were delivered in such an interesting way - the lecturer's presentation skills, proper examples, group work, discussions...
People are so busy blaming students for every single thing that sometimes they fail to see the true cause of the problem and perhaps an alternative solution.
Matthew Agius Muscat
May 11th 2012, 12:21
Playing devil's advocate here.
Criticizing the student body for being self-entitled, then producing a self-entitled blog post is really poor showing. Opinionated or not, this is a serious personal attack. Your previous blog post poked at the Maltese education system in general and how it isn't up to scratch, yet here you are now, opening fire on Anon Student for criticizing a lecture for being dull.
Which one is it? The student body? The university? If it's the university, then your point is moot. If it's the student body, then your previous point about education is moot. Some consistency would be nice.
Why not take up your journalistic responsibilities, attend the class yourself and form your own opinion instead of regurgitating what you've heard? Since you're so eager to compare us with European counterparts, if you wrote something as baseless as this in Sweden both your career and newspaper would be torn apart mercilessly.
Devil's advocate hat off, this one is my opinion. "Boredom is an integral part of life" - that's the most pessimistic line I've ever read. Apathy is one of man's greatest enemies and attitudes like that are to thank for it.
Matthew Borg
May 11th 2012, 12:03
Completely agree.
I'm currently a fifth year law student, and the definition of 'boredom' reaches new heights when studying the material that has to be covered for this year. But I've learnt that you just have to deal with it and move on - complaining about it isn't going to make it fun, no matter how much one would want to slit their wrists over such work. Or any better, for that matter, because it's just taking up more time in getting to the bottom of the pile of notes that have to be studied for examination purposes.
Whenever I go to lectures, I go to take down notes - with my laptop - and see what the lecturer is going to tell us about the subject at hand - not to predominantly browse Facebook or play games. Otherwise, what on earth would I be doing at University, if I'm not there to learn? I'd merely be taking up a space that another potentially capable student could have taken instead of myself. The result? More often than not, in a typical two hour lecture, I will emerge from the lecture hall with six pages of freshly minted notes. Indeed, not many people can 'boast' (so to speak) of those quantities.
If the only intellectual thing that one can do while at University is uselessly browse the internet to alleviate the 'boredom', then one simply should not even be at studying at the University in the first place.
Mary Mills
May 11th 2012, 11:43
Tend to agree that students in Malta seem spoilt; still living with parents, as the majority does, they hardly have to think about meals, laundry, paying rent, elec./gas bills... even begin to learn how to manage living independently of their family. Not trying to be too hard on them but, perhaps they should spare a thought about their counterparts in, for instance, the UK.
Most of the latter need to survive on loans which have to be repaid once they start earning above a certain amount. Loans, for most of them, need to be portioned out to pay rent, buy books, food, fares..... Attending universities far from home a bit of an initiation into proper adult independent day-to-day life - they have to (learn) to budget, shop for food, cook, clean, do the washing, share accommodation with possible strangers... grow up a bit.
Kelly Dent
May 11th 2012, 13:31
Ms. Mills -
Your point about Maltese students being 'spoilt' based on living with their parents is flawed. Students abroad move out and move away from their families out of NECESSITY, because Universities are far away. It would hardly make sense for every university student in Malta to move out of their family homes - I doubt our tiny island could facilitate such a demand for rental properties.
C. Muscat
May 11th 2012, 09:23
Amen! Our students are too spoiled so that we have an 'adult' who thinks like a child. Wake up anonymous student, if you do not like the lectures then just leave, join the work-force and pay taxes for other spoiled brats' education and stipends like the rest of us.
rossy farrugia
May 11th 2012, 13:40
i'm sorry but you cant generalize ,there are students who i think are in the majority ,who aren't spoilt and hard working i personally dont have an iphone or a laptop or an ipad ,joining the work -force at a young age with a minimum level of education is really not a good way out..and remember the tax payers are not just paying for 'spoilt brats' but even for the single -mothers,the unknown fathers,the drug addicts,the lazy couch potatoes,the gamblers,health services etc etc so trust me paying for a students stipend is only a small fraction of your taxes and todays students will pay for your pension mr muscat ,so please as they say .. '.tpoggiex lil kulhadd f'keffa wahda '
C. Muscat
May 14th 2012, 12:14
you are right...re-reading my e-mail made me realise that I did indeed generalize. So an amendment is necessary...the students who had the audacity to lash out at Profs. Vella are spoiled brats. Thank you for pointing it out. Rossy, you will not be paying my pension my dear...i'm paying the taxes and n.i. myself for that, thank you very much....besides the pensionable age is already up to 65years of age, by the time I'm of that age, it will rise to 75...and the likelihood is that I will not live to receive the pension at all. By the way, I attended a lecture recently on pensions...did you know that pensions today are an average of 60% of the average salary and with the pension reform and all, in two decades time it will only be 35% of the average wage...so we're looking at a very grim future??!
rossy farrugia
May 14th 2012, 14:27
well regarding the pension ..you're right the age will rise and probably you would not receive nothing at all but by the time i grow older i will probably not even have a ' retirement age' ,and i would still be working while i'm hooked to a drip or life supporting machine ..a grim future indeed
J Degabriele
May 10th 2012, 17:35
Totally agree!
"Boredom is an integral part of life, deal with it." Can't have said it better. Many of today's youngsters are totally bored and jaded. They've got everything and can't think what to do with themselves! It' so refreshing when one finds interested and keen students today.
B Camilleri
May 11th 2012, 16:10
You obviously haven't spoken to many students then, if students weren't as keen and interested in getting into university we wouldn't bother even doing our A-levels.
I'm obviously locked myself inside for 5 months to study for my A-levels because I'm bored with life and I can't think of anything to do with myself. /sarcasm
I suggest people stop making sweeping statements and get in touch with what they were like when they were young.
Please choose the reason of your report below: