When You Weren’t Looking, They Were Working

[sweeps]

Coming across a draft of a memoir my father was working on before he died, I realized I had never known how hard his work had been for a number of years in middle age.

NYT Column

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Ben Stein apparently sees himself as having been an ungrateful pig of a college student who walked down a red carpet woven and embroidered by his parents with with gold threads spun from ore they themselves mined, and he projects the same attitude onto present day college students.

I do not think that the typical college student is wholly supported by parents in a life of luxurious naiveté. Many work very hard at part and/or full time jobs while putting themselves through school. Even those who live with parents often contribute to the mortgage, food, and utilities. Increasingly college students are older than most first year graduate students were in Ben Stein's day, and have been supporting themselves for several years.

[geojen]

I agree with Joan. I don't really understand his position. When I was in college, my peers and I all worked part-time, took out loans, and worked our butts off. No "sitting by the river" or any other such thing.

Of course, my parents helped me out tremendously and I appreciate that. But Stein's portrayal that students are a bunch of lazy drunks unwilling to work hard is a sweeping generalization and totally inappropriate.