University life... Is it alienating students from their real lives?

Students at Carnegie Mellon University spend most of their time at campus studying. They aim for better grades, better degree and a better job in the future. But if we were to look deeply at their lives, they have less social lives than they use to have before university. Most of CMU students spend around 12 hours a day on campus studying!

We are living in a Capitalist world!
Their hard wok and the long hours of studying is an illustration of capitalism. Students work hard to get the best grades and to be at the top, which makes college environment a competitive environment. Furthermore, some courses are designed to create this competitive environment for the students. Some professors limit the number of student who will get A in the course to a small present of the class. No matter what the student’s grade was, only top 20% for instance will get an A. this environment have made students compete against each other rather that just being friends and partners.

Karl Marx theory of alienation has described this situation where men are disconnected from other men. Competitive environments are established to get as much value as possible from the students. But at the same time it is disconnecting students from their peers as it makes them work against each other. His theory of alienation as he claims is a result of capitalism. On a talk with Sara BA Junior she said, “Almost all business related courses are competitive,” which shows that they are living in a capitalist environment.

Alienation from family
Due to the long hours CMUQ-ers spend at the university studying they barely see their families, not only on weekdays but also on weekends. Hassan Salatt, a BA sophomore said that he goes to CMU even on weekends. He prefers to study there rather than at home because he works efficiently there. It is the fact that every one is looking for the efficiency on everything we do prove that we are in a capitalist world.

Alienation from the product
In the process of working hard to get the optimal and higher grade possible almost all students tend to restrict their work to what the professor would like to see on it. They don’t work on the things they find interesting rather than they work on what their audience (professor) wants to see. This is actually disconnecting the student from the work he produces.

Can the alienation theory holds up in all situations?
Although the alienation theory is true in most of working places, but in universities where students are allowed to do independent studies, the alienation theory can’t be true! Because in independent studies, students are allowed to choose a topic of their own with the professor they wish to work with. Their work is almost always about a topic that interests them not what their professors ask them to do.

It is true that university students are disconnecting themselves from family friends by the long hours they spend studying and it is all results of our capitalist environment. However, their work is not always alienated from them. In fact they can work on any topic they want on an independent study.

Separate but Equal

A paradox in the making of the world has shone light on a topic that the world suffers most from, Racism.

Racism is the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. For this blog post, I’m not only talking about Racism in the area of Race, but also in the area of stereotypes.

How can one be called a racist? Well, one must not tolerate the other race. Anyone can be called a racist these days. This is because everyone has ideas about other people. They are all socialized to believe that they are of one race and the others around them are different. Some people teach their children not to socialize with other children from different ethnicities or even races due to the fear of “Identity loss”.

How can one have an identity when one lives in such a diverse world? There are people in the same family that are of different races, let alone your next-door neighbors or your friends. Everyone is different; people need to seriously start realizing that!

My latest project in my major class was about Labor workers in Qatar and how they live their social life. Out reporting for hours on end in this mild spring weather, I realized that there’s a lot that people don’t know about this place.

The workers had one day to socialize and they use that day to do their shopping, play cricket with friends and make the longest phone-call to their home country.

They are seen as single workers who are not allowed in on Fridays to Malls. Well, in this country, Friday is Family Day. They are seen as the workers who people don’t want to associate themselves with all the time, unless they have to.

If we actually think about it, these people are the ones putting their sweat and blood into building our nation and we repay them with what?! Little money! One day off! Living in poor housing, complexes outside the main city. They’re fine with all of that trust me! But then you even take away their privilege of being free to roam in the country they are building? Why?

An anthropologist, Ms. Rico said that it is “Violent” that these workers cannot enjoy the privileges that they are building for us. It really is a sad image to see when a worker builds the mall and when it is finally open, he is not allowed in to see his work complete.

Sociology has played a huge part in making this issue come to reality. The more people are socialized from their birth to be with the people they look like; this would never be a world with no discrimination, racism or hate!

Stereotypes are given to everyone from all races, there are even jokes made about these stereotypes. Humor and movies are used to shine light that not everyone is equal, but not everyone is separate either. I guess that’s what the workers would witness time and time again, they are equal with people, the citizens, but they are also very separate and living separate lives.