The College Life
Everyone knows it’s not easy being a student. Students today juggle class, work, plans for their future, internships, relationships, friendships, their parents, roommates, and deal with finding out who they are and what they want out of life.
After watching “A Vision of Students Today” from Kansas State University, it’s not surprising to hear that students pack 26.5 hours of activities into a 24 hour day. With three year of college under my belt, that’s how I spent most of my college life, taking 18+ units each semester, working 20 hours a week, living in cramped dorm conditions with some pretty unpleasant roommates, spending time with friends, and dealing with dating and relationships.
Like most students, my books didn’t get read in classes where the material wasn’t incorporated in class nor had any real relevance to my life. Un-engaging classes meant low attendance. People in class would have games on their computer screams or have intricate drawings on their note papers. Then there were students who were putting themselves through college and seemed to ask a million questions and took pages upon pages of notes on essentially useless info that they will use on the midterms and finals and forget come next semester.
There are exceptions however. It’s clear to tell when you’ve got a good professor. Nearly everyone comes to class every class meeting. When the professor speaks, everyone listens and responds to what they say. Students are encouraged to think and share their opinions and experiences that are relevant to class. As students, we recognize when a professor is passionate about what they teach.
In my brief time as an Environmental Ethics major at Humboldt State I had a Natural Resources Conservation course with a professor that was honored to be teaching us. We were assigned three carefully selected books, I read each one front to back, and we discussed each book in class. Everyday we tackled a new topic and he made it relevant to our lives. At the end of the last class he thanked us for being such a great and almost cried when expressing how grateful he was to be able to help get us thinking about the decisions we make in our lives and our impact on our world, whether it be through person action or through taking public action. That’s exactly what he did, and two years later, I still remember just about everything he taught us.
So why isn’t every professor this passionate? Maybe they’ve lost their enthusiasm over the years. Maybe they’ve assumed students don’t care enough and neither should they. Maybe they’re on a power trip and feel like students should play by their rules or they fail. Years of being told to sit still and be quiet and doing things by the books and fill in the bubbles has made us comatose in the classroom, especially in large classes where you can easily get away with listening to music or fiddling with your computer and know you’ll never be expected to respond to anything the professor is saying.
Students don’t feel pressured to be engaged in these large class settings, and with all the other stresses in their lives, class may be the one time they get to sit down for an hour or so. They have time to check their e-mail and networking sights while their professors lectures about post modern assimilation of the spotted owl frog, which means nothing to them and their life or future. Knowing they have to go to work for 6 hours after class, they relax with some music on their I-pod and work on a doodle of a dinosaur riding a skateboard while their professor rambles about personal stories about how they tried to get a game patented and repeat the same statistics over and over despite being on supposedly different topics although every single day sounds like the same lecture.
In situations like that, some classes start to feel like a waste of time, and a waste of effort and concern. Students have the option of not going, or going just incase they get an assignment or pop quiz so their GPA doesn’t get dragged down.
If this cycle of dispassionate professors and uninterested students continues, college will become useless and we will have an entire generation of young people that are unprepared for their careers and life. Students need to demand more from their professors and drop courses that will be a waste of their time and money to help get their point across. Through sites like ratemyprofessors.com and the spreading of alarming statistics like in the Kansas State YouTube video, technology may be able to save us after all.
-Melissa Kilmer
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Restaurant Review: Kozen
This week I visited one of my favorite Sacramento restaurants: Kozen. Kozen is a traditional sushi restaurant. The owners, a father and son from Japan, designed and decorated the restaurant themselves and designed many of their own dishes which are so creative both visually and taste wise that other local sushi places have reportedly been stealing their ideas.
The restaurant itself, which opened only several months ago, is simple and elegant. You enter and are greeted by trickling water fall wall. On the left is beautiful bar, great for spending time with close friends-but be careful who you bring, the owners don’t want customers coming to their bar to get hammered, but to enjoy the experience and atmosphere of the restaurant they put so much thought into. If you go to the right you walk into the dining room, where you’ll find modern but classic interior with a clean look so you’ll focus on the beauty of the dishes when they arrive.
Each roll is handmade right when you order so while you’re waiting we’ve typically been offered complimentary sake or miso soup, and the pace of the meal definitely allows for a relaxed dining experience and plenty of time to talk with your dining companion and maybe even enjoy a few drinks. When looking over the menu you’ll see they have an extensive variety of hand rolls, sashimi, sushi rolls, and even a few cooked dishes if you’re bringing along a diner that doesn’t enjoy raw seafood.
Each dish is served on an elegant square dish, letting the food shine. They have creative rolls such as the dragon roll and the caterpillar, which look just how they sound and taste divine. Their simple rolls such teka maki-tuna roll- is just as delicious as well because of the high quality and freshness of their seafood. They offer perfectly done baked rolls as well that those who can’t eat raw fish can enjoy as well.
Having recently converted to vegetarianism for mostly ethical and health reasons, seafood in the sushi from Kozen is the only meat I’ll make an exception for on very rare occasions. I had to share how great this restaurant is with everyone instead going to a place I’ve only been to just once and will probably find unsatisfactory. When you how to cook well, going out to a restaurant can be disappointing, but not once have I been disappointed by Kozen or received something and thought, ‘I could do a better job at making this.’
On my last visit I sampled several rolls with my dining companion. We ordered a California roll, which unlike most California rolls, this one was made with a solid piece of crab rather than shredded crab, giving it a more sturdy texture and pronounced crab flavored. Along with that we ordered a simple but delicious roll, the teka maki. A piece of solitary raw tuna rests in the middle of the roll and the flavor of the raw tuna will leave you in amazement in how raw tuna turns into that canned slop your mom used to use to make your sandwiches with in grade school. To top off the meal we ordered a baked salmon roll, which has a shredded crab center, topped with filets of salmon, baked, and topped with a creamy sauce, a red spicy sauce, orange tobiko caviar, and scallions. It looks and smells great when you get it, and although you may want to devour it immediately, it’s best to let it sit for a little bit and let it set up or else your delectable baked salmon roll might fall apart on the way to your mouth.
While the food may be a little pricier than other local sushi places, you’re getting what you pay for in the quality, detail, presentation, and consistently delicious food that will leave your taste buds, waste line, and conscience satisfied. So next time you’re craving amazing sushi and a great atmosphere, stop in at Kozen and sample some of their sushi that tastes the way sushi is meant to.
2310 Fair Oaks Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 641-8880
-Melissa Kilmer
The restaurant itself, which opened only several months ago, is simple and elegant. You enter and are greeted by trickling water fall wall. On the left is beautiful bar, great for spending time with close friends-but be careful who you bring, the owners don’t want customers coming to their bar to get hammered, but to enjoy the experience and atmosphere of the restaurant they put so much thought into. If you go to the right you walk into the dining room, where you’ll find modern but classic interior with a clean look so you’ll focus on the beauty of the dishes when they arrive.
Each roll is handmade right when you order so while you’re waiting we’ve typically been offered complimentary sake or miso soup, and the pace of the meal definitely allows for a relaxed dining experience and plenty of time to talk with your dining companion and maybe even enjoy a few drinks. When looking over the menu you’ll see they have an extensive variety of hand rolls, sashimi, sushi rolls, and even a few cooked dishes if you’re bringing along a diner that doesn’t enjoy raw seafood.
Each dish is served on an elegant square dish, letting the food shine. They have creative rolls such as the dragon roll and the caterpillar, which look just how they sound and taste divine. Their simple rolls such teka maki-tuna roll- is just as delicious as well because of the high quality and freshness of their seafood. They offer perfectly done baked rolls as well that those who can’t eat raw fish can enjoy as well.
Having recently converted to vegetarianism for mostly ethical and health reasons, seafood in the sushi from Kozen is the only meat I’ll make an exception for on very rare occasions. I had to share how great this restaurant is with everyone instead going to a place I’ve only been to just once and will probably find unsatisfactory. When you how to cook well, going out to a restaurant can be disappointing, but not once have I been disappointed by Kozen or received something and thought, ‘I could do a better job at making this.’
On my last visit I sampled several rolls with my dining companion. We ordered a California roll, which unlike most California rolls, this one was made with a solid piece of crab rather than shredded crab, giving it a more sturdy texture and pronounced crab flavored. Along with that we ordered a simple but delicious roll, the teka maki. A piece of solitary raw tuna rests in the middle of the roll and the flavor of the raw tuna will leave you in amazement in how raw tuna turns into that canned slop your mom used to use to make your sandwiches with in grade school. To top off the meal we ordered a baked salmon roll, which has a shredded crab center, topped with filets of salmon, baked, and topped with a creamy sauce, a red spicy sauce, orange tobiko caviar, and scallions. It looks and smells great when you get it, and although you may want to devour it immediately, it’s best to let it sit for a little bit and let it set up or else your delectable baked salmon roll might fall apart on the way to your mouth.
While the food may be a little pricier than other local sushi places, you’re getting what you pay for in the quality, detail, presentation, and consistently delicious food that will leave your taste buds, waste line, and conscience satisfied. So next time you’re craving amazing sushi and a great atmosphere, stop in at Kozen and sample some of their sushi that tastes the way sushi is meant to.
2310 Fair Oaks Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 641-8880
-Melissa Kilmer
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