We welcome freshmen with this issue, but the welcome extends to others who are freshly new to this campus community, transfer students and those coming back to school after a few years out in the “real world.” This issue also welcomes Sharon Hahs, a brand new president for this institution.
This institution has been knocked as “Northeasy” or “one of the best high schools in Chicago” and while NEIU is not Harvard, some of our faculty have been there and a quality education can be found her, if you seek it out.
This is not high school, or the job where your boss tells you how to spend your day students are welcome to make as much or as little of their time here as they wish. What you do here and how you make use of that time will make or break your college experience and will have far reaching effects on the rest of your life.
Students in high school or people in the work world might worry about needing to come up with a good excuse for why class was missed or a shift at work, convincing those classic authority figures of teacher or boss they really were when actually there was a really big baseball game at Wrigley Field or Sox Park. This is college, you are paying to take these classes and if there is something better to do go a head and go, no one will sweat you for a doctor’s note, but know the consequences.
Professors are a group that thinks what they do is important and worthwhile. It may a class analyzing the International Monetary Fund’s effects on African Economies to you, but to Dr. David Leaman it is an exciting area of evolving study he spent a whole lot of time studding with real world applications that is worthy of lots of discussion and understanding. It being important to him and class participation being part of the grade in most classes, not showing up will effect your grade.
There are some classes less demanding than Dr. Leaman’s and honestly there are professors who cover in lecture what they just assigned to be read anyway. So homework is not as important to squeak by and just pass the course in some cases.
That’s fine if all you want to do is just squeak by and pass, if however you are interested in coming to a fuller understanding of the world and your place in it and pick up work and social habits that will make you a leader rather than just another cog in the wheel, then don’t just do the minimum, raise your hand and ask the teacher to give a better answer, get involved in the campus in a club, on an intramural team or with the cause.
The other thing getting involved will do is to let you practice the skills needed in that real world we are all desperately trying to get out into.
Some students have jobs and families and can be seen dashing in at 5:40 for an evening class running straight from work, those students might say, “yea right, I have time for clubs.” It is true that for students like that, of which there are many at NEIU, have a tougher time getting involved, but not as tough as one may think.
At the Independent there are regularly scheduled times we meet and assign stories, however, story assignments are also often placed using online Yahoo groups, so writers do not actually need to be at all of the meetings.
This use of these types of web based user groups are used by many campus clubs and organizations. The political science group is now using the NEIUPort for its group. The bottom line here is that students do not need to necessarily be at scheduled meetings to get involved in campus life and clubs.
Remember if half of life is showing up, imagine how far you can go if you exceed that just a little bit.