The truth about college

Homework: here is a concept that radically changes when a pupil goes from high-school to university. This blog itself is the example of this radical change: part of an assignment on the Information Systems course of my degree, I am supposedly required to post something on it every week. Although the purpose of this mandatory assignment cannot seem to fit into any kind of logic reasoning when analysing an Information Systems course, I still have to do it.

And so, every week, I have to twist my mind and find a topic which is interesting enough to comment about and waste around 2 hours writing something about it. The reality is that this makes no sense at all: since when are we required to imagine things and write properly about them on an Information Systems course? If the assignment were to find an interesting article on a web-site every week, or if it were to think of new ways to develop information systems, or even expose cases we have been in contact with, then yes, I could see the point in such assignment: there could be room for innovation and personal development, two of the main pillars of the University education. But no: the requirement is simply to post something on a blog every week, or have a 0 in your continuous evaluation grade. An assignment that bring no personal development whatsoever and that seems nothing but a mockery to the concept of University itself.

Ok, so some people might argue that it develops my communication skills and my reporting skills…. NO IT DOESN’T!

Don’t elude yourself: we get absolutely no feedback on these posts unless we don’t post anything on the blog (in which case we get one of those nice messages with an ultimatum to post something on it over the next day or get a 0 on the continuous evaluation).If we get no feedback and have no proficient English-speaking teaching showing us the expressions and colloquialisms we could use in one or another situation, and if we gain absolutely no knowledge by complying with this requirement, then we can only come to the conclusion that the purpose of this assignment is simply to make us look like fool puppets..