I stand before you today to do what few, or perhaps none, have dared to do before: I’m blaming my professors for my incomplete General Education requirements.
That’s right, personal responsibility be damned, I wave dismissively in your general direction, Binghamton University. It shouldn’t take a certified rocket scientist (or someone in possession of the coveted “O” credit) to know that I am more than capable of “oral communication.”
I have never been told that I need to speak more eloquently — or, for that matter, more in any sense of the word — in my entire life. In fact, some might go so far as to say I need lessons in keeping my mouth shut. I’d probably be among them.
That said, I have somehow managed to overload my way through 3 1/2 years at Binghamton University without ever receiving an oral communications designation. How, pray tell, did I let my career continue for so long in this way? I was naive enough to think that somewhere along the way all of my requirements would be met by the dozens of courses required by my various other academic endeavors. Fail.
Now, as I face my last semester at Binghamton, I am confronted by not only the prospect of yet another overload, but also the fact that I have been shut out of all courses that possess the “O” for which I am being penalized. As much fun as the Senior Project engineering course looks, I somehow don’t think I’ll be petitioning into it in the near future.
I blame the colleges, the departments, the professors and the University administration for this. I simply refuse to believe that no other student has faced the prospect of a serious problem courtesy of a requirement that looks all but impossible to complete in one semester — through little fault of the student. Why, then, is there a failure to address this problem?
In order to have a General Education requirement put on a course, the professor must submit all kinds of paperwork and documentation to a committee, which then must approve the course. Small wonder that relatively few courses have General Education components — it’s not like there aren’t a wide variety of courses being taught that fulfill the requirements, just that professors don’t want to face the hassle of bureaucracy. Well, who would? I’m certainly not enjoying it. Something needs to change if the University is really interested in educating its students.
I suggest a minimum requirement be put on all departments to ensure that students aren’t forced to take irrelevant and useless courses on subjects completely divorced from the reality of their studies. If departments were required to meet certain quotas on General Education requirements, maybe professors would start filing the paperwork. If BU Brain is here to stay, it’s certainly time to make everything else a little more student-friendly.
So thanks, Binghamton University, SUNY Central Administration and everyone else with a hand in the General Education requirements. If I have to come back next fall to take a one-credit “O” class, I’ll be sure to regularly remind you of my appreciation via the oral communication skills I’ll acquire.