I had a long chat yesterday with a couple of my students about the costs of having "too many" humanities and social science subjects in the curriculum. They expressed the same concerns we've heard a million times before--that this is the reason our students don't have enough time to become as excellent as we would like in their sciences.
To this, I had a few responses.
First, such is the nature of the Ateneo education. There was a design to all this, a purpose, a reason: Well-roundedness. Interdisciplinarity. Magis. That said, what you get is an imperfect mixed bag that has room for improvement. But no educational system is perfect. You make the best with what you are given.
Second, this is in part how you are supposed to choose your schools. You aren't supposed to be blinded by the glare of the shiny blue acceptance packet. You're supposed to take a hard look at the curriculum and agree to work with it... or not. I'm not saying you can't complain. But just be careful of where you make your attributions.
Which brings me to my third point. I have spent a lot of time with you guys. I have some sense of how you use your time, and it isn't always on theo and philo. The week that Skyrim came out, one of our ACM boys told me he spent TWENTY-FOUR hours that week playing. This also happened to be a week when we were gearing up for the ICPC. Over summer, when I had interns being PAID to work on ALLS projects full-time, with no theo and philo to distract them, the results I got could not have been attributed to full-time work.
Fourth point, some counterexamples: Our varsity teams manage to spend 10 hours a week on training. The Glee Club spends I believe three half days a week on rehearsals. Do they have more hours in their days that everyone else?
Fifth point. I find it ironic that a complaint such as this should be raised in my lab, which is all about interdisciplinarity. If you don't see the relevance of at least the social sciences in what this lab does, then maybe I didn't have you do a thorough enough lit review.
Sixth point. No one every has "enough time" for everything they want to do. Other stuff will always get in the way. There is a legend about a professor in Carnegie Mellon (and CMU is as hard-core as it gets) who looked at his PhD student's grades and said, "You're getting too many As and Bs. Next semester I want to see Cs and Ds." His point? You're spending too much on coursework and not enough time in the lab. And note, this is at the PhD level, so all the coursework is discipline-related.
In summary: We choose we use our time, based on what is important to us. Our students (and pretty much everyone else I know) are among the happy few who are bombarded with options of all kinds. The work just keeps coming in, like a tide. No one will stem it for you. You have to decide what tasks you will undertake and what you will refuse. Try to predict the consequences of your choices and take the course whose consequences you're willing to accept.
Jason King Li, Jeff Jongko and I were talking about this exactly. Jason asked, "What if your prediction is wrong?" Jeff's response, "Shit happens."
