MIDS 100: A Waste of Life

As I was registering for my classes last semester I was informed that because I was a transfer student and did not transfer a certain amount of hours that I had to take MIDS 100, a freshman orientation class. Did it matter that I had already taken the equivalent of that course at NWMSU? That I had already completed over 80 credit hours, with 50+ from MSSU? Of course not. Why would anyone take those things into consideration? That makes sense.

As if students don’t have enough to focus on with their core classes universities are going to go ahead and FORCE them to take a freshman orientation class. I think the old proverb “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” applies here. You can force me take this class, and pass it, but you can’t force me to learn. In order to learn from this class there would have to be something to learn.

One of the main subjects this class attempts to “teach” is time management. I find it a little more than difficult to effectively manage my time when I have to spend so many hours a week reading, filling out journals, and doing critically thinking exercises about things such as something I do well and how I learned to do it. C’mon now that is time that could be better spent. On what? I don’t know, maybe studying and doing homework for your core and major classes. Just a thought. It’s also a little difficult to manage my time when I have anywhere from 3-5 pointless assignments in this class A WEEK. Once again, time that could be better spent.

Most of what they teach in these freshman orientation classes is common sense. And that which isn’t common sense has been force fed to us our whole lives. If you don’t know about the food pyramid, eating right and exercising, peer pressure and ways to say no to it, that binge drinking can have bad consequences, unprotected sex can lead to pregnancies and STDs, drunk driving is never a good idea, etc, then quite frankly I’m not sure how you made it to college.

I think if anything this class should be optional. I understand there are some people out there who probably could learn a thing or two from this class. Or people who perhaps love to talk about themselves and would really get a kick out of writing 3-5 papers a week about what they do well, what they had for lunch, etc. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this does not apply to the vast majority of students.