No satisfaction

The 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement came out last week. Among other things, it mentioned helicopter parents – those parents who, rather than dropping their kids off at the dorm freshman year and high-tailing it back home, remain painstakingly active in their college students’ lives. Apparently, children of these types of parents are more “satisfied” with their college experience.\nHmm. Less time spent in a professor’s office hours and more time spent playing Halo III. What student wouldn’t be satisfied with that? With mom and dad contacting college officials and professors every time their baby gets wait listed for History of Rock and Roll or has a problem with a roommate, the lives of college students today are becoming far too easy.\nBut will this make things harder for these students in the future? We feel the answer is yes. \nIt is pretty hard to imagine someone having his parent call a potential employer after a job rejection. But how are many members of our generation supposed to deal with real life if their parents won’t let them experience the only training ground for it, college? \nFiguring things out for oneself is the only way to develop successful job skills and relationships, and helicopter parents are standing in the way of this by acting as guardians for their children. The National Survey of Student Engagement found that, in addition to the high rate of satisfaction, students with highly involved parents also had significantly lower grades than others. This indicates that although these students are feeling good about themselves and their college experience, they may not be doing what they need to do in order to prepare themselves for the next step. \nMary Elizabeth Hughes, a sociologist at Duke University, says that the trend in helicopter parenting may be a result of economic anxiety. The job market is seemingly getting smaller and smaller as members of our generation attempt to enter it, and some of our parents are trying to remedy the situation by taking it into their own hands. \nAs Baby Boomers, however, they are forgetting what made their generation strong: working hard without their parents in order to enact change and promote themselves. \nAs students of today, we should follow the precedent set by our parents when they were our age, rather than their actions as hyper-involved adults. So the next time we get a grade we feel is unfair, we should march into the professor’s office ourselves rather than asking our parents to do it for us. It is time that we take our lives into our own hands, as it will be our only option in just four years.\nIt’s honestly no surprise that students whose parents come to the rescue are more “satisfied” with their college experiences, but college isn’t about getting satisfaction. College provides us an opportunity to start finding a way on our own, not staying under our parents’ wings.