You can't be coddled through college

If you're a college student, you know there's always a professor who is “too hard.” A professor who is mean, or racist, or sexist, or incompetent, or all of those things, or a combination of them.

Most of the time, it seems these complaints come from people who are not very good students, the kind of student who is disruptive or otherwise difficult to manage (you know who you are), or they come from students who are unwilling to accept that they will be held to standards on attendance or on their written work. I know, I might be over-generalizing, but I'm calling it as I see it.

I've felt at times surrounded by students who are unwilling to accept the fact that if they want to succeed, they might have to actually do something that bears a frightening resemblance to actual work. “I showed up, I did the assignment,” I have heard them say. “Why is my grade so terrible?”

I get the impression that these people actually believe they are entitled to preferential treatment simply because they paid the same fees as anyone else to attend this campus.
    
This is the sort of attitude that is prevalent in the real world. I'm sure we've all heard of the idea that the “customer is always right”, an idea that is abused so often that it's become a mockery of common sense.
    
People seem to think that just by showing up, they should be coddled through their classes, minimum effort for maximum reward. These same people probably try to return things without a receipt and get upset about it when they get turned away by the cashier. How dare someone follow the rules!

Our high schools around here don’t seem to prepare students for college level writing or mathematics. In almost every class I've attended, there always seems to be a large number of students who cannot write a proper term paper or effectively answer an essay question.

Worse yet, some of these students get offended when they are called out on their work, and they spread their distaste for accountability and quality work to other students. Go to RateMyProfessor.com, and look up some of the teachers you've had here. The comments some folks leave behind are probably as poorly written as some of their assignments they got dinged on. It's always the school's fault, the professor's fault. Not that there isn’t valid criticism for a professor, but it sure seems to be the exception to the rule.

If you get anything by reading this, it should be this: You are responsible for the outcome of your time in college, regardless of the challenges a professor lays down upon you. This literally isn't a free ride; we all pay to be here. We would all do well to do away with the notion that we deserve to have success. We have to earn it.