My first semester as a business student at ASU is almost over, and I feel I have made more progress than my years as a game art major at UAT. My education at UAT was decent, but the mannerisms of the students and the lack of a serious fine arts backing led to a desire for change. And so I began my transfer to ASU. I have already mentioned in a previous post my switch from a Fine Arts degree at ASU to a Business Management degree. So far, I have not regretted the decision. I feel more at place and certainly more passionate about this than almost anything I've done in life. In my short time at ASU, I have already noticed some key advantages, aside from the change in major.
1. The Culture
As I began writing this section, I quickly created a fairly lengthy rant. For the interest of readers (and my own sanity), I will craft that monologue into a separate post. I will make the point here more concise.
There are a little over 1000 students at UAT, most of them male. These students tend to spend a ridiculous amount of time with video games, and have a common trend of social awkwardness. Education takes a backseat to unproductive games. I am not saying video games are inherently evil, but anything that means so little to progress needs to be done in moderation. The social ineptitude of the students is particularly troublesome for the women that attend, who number less than 100 the last time I checked. During the orientation weeks, the new girls are followed by anywhere between 5 and 20 nerds that have no idea how to talk to a girl. The girls are pretty much stalked to various degrees. Some of them love the attention, and others are genuinely uneasy. Of course, there are a good number of awesome people in the upper classes, but I personally could not remain in a school with such a high density of "creepers."
The last figures I saw for ASU numbered the population somewhere for 50,000 with a roughly 50/50 split in the male/female ratio. The university offers a broad range of academic pursuits, and does not specifically target any particular social group. This brings a great diversity of cultures that makes the school rich with social knowledge. With ASU's academic reputation, you also tend to get students that take their education a bit more seriously. Of course, people will often place immediate gratification over the long run. Combined with the ease of high school, you get a good deal of students that party too much and sacrifice their grades. The difference here is, the students tend to pick up their grades over time, something I rarely noticed at UAT.
2. Class Structure
I can not speak for every class at ASU, but a good deal of them are lecture-based classes that can seat hundreds of students. The maximum I ever saw at UAT was maybe 30 students, but most were around 15. With UAT, you tend to get more personalized care from the professor. This is it's greatest strength, but one of it's greatest weaknesses. I noticed that many classes would scale back the difficulty to the ability of the laziest students. This cheats everyone. The greatest students have no incentive to hone their skills in class. The worst get through with a degree if they did the bare minimum work they were given, but are complacent and have no chance at a job in their chosen field. They are useless.
This does not exist in the lecture-based class. The lazy students have no interaction with the professor. Only the ambitious approach the professor, avoiding any undue influence by the students that refuse to succeed. If you want to pass the class, you have to do your work. In the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU, you have to be damn good at your work. The economy is unforgiving to those who don't know what they are doing. That's the government's job, but I digress. Only the strong survive here.
Despite the large number of students in a single class, the professors are still approachable. Each of them have office hours for the students to come in and pick their brains. Aside from this, they have students assistants that are capable of helping reinforce their material outside the classroom. For the students with a drive for their future, the resources are available to accelerate that drive.
3. Workload
In high school, the bulk of my classes were AP courses. As much as I tried to get away with not studying, I still had to do it in order to pass the classes, let alone the AP tests at the end. At UAT, my studying took a roaring halt. With the aforementioned decrease in difficulty, I could easily slide through most of my classes. At ASU, I do not have this illusionary luxury. For every test I have had to take, I have had to study for. While the concepts make sense to me, I still need to ingrain them into my head. I need to work harder than I ever have in order to get my degree. From this, I am going to come out of the university knowing what I'm doing, and will have the ability to apply it to my career. At UAT, I saw far too many students that could slide through with a degree but nothing to show for it. I could see an artist graduate but somehow have no portfolio of work. If you don't have a portfolio, you can't be an artist. UAT is essentially a degree mill for many of its majors. Degrees from ASU actually mean something.
Any university will be what you make of it, but some things can make it more substantial. I got a lot out of UAT. I would not trade the experiences or the friendships I made for the world. But these last few months have been a greater educational journey than any I have had before. In my next post, I plan to expand on the cultural nuances of UAT that were the overall tipping point for my exit from the university.
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