It
is not always possible to make one thing in life the top priority. In the
essay "Education is the Priority," Nicholle Palmieri describes how college
students fail to make education their top priority. However, it's not just
jobs that hinder ones' ability to succeed; at times students can be conflicted
by emotional distress, physical pain and lack of motivation.
When Nicholle
Palmieri was a junior in high school she held a job as a sales clerk. One
day she told her boss that she couldn't work overtime because she needed
to study for an exam. Her boss threatened to fire her, but she quit before
he could because she knew her priorities. Now she is a work-study assistant
in the office of the Dean of Liberal Arts at her college. During her experiences
at her new job, she learned a great deal about college students' priorities.
Palmieri states: "Most of these students have failed to make education their
top priority, and are paying for it dearly. In fact, there is one claim that
almost all have in common: their hours at work have taken precious time away
from their college studies" (563). Overall, Palmieri explains that nothing
should keep a person from an education and a successful future. However,
this is not true in all cases.
In order
to be successful, a person must work hard in all aspects of life, which sometimes
includes a job. Certainly it's important to have a good education but sometimes
a person needs to "work" to afford that education. Many college students
are left to pay for their education and well being. Therefore, those students
need jobs in order to accomplish that. The author clams: "I too have bills
to pay, and I manage to pay them by working 15 hours a week or less" (564).
For some students, 15 hours of labor doesn't pay many expenses. That's why
most of them work for more hours than they should. How can they ever pay
for tuition, bills, food and shelter if they don't make enough money? They
just can't. Students need money to go to college and that's why some need
jobs. The author may be "lucky" to have a job that she works at only 15 hours
a week, but not all of us are so "lucky." I know people who have had to work
and go to college, but still manage to become very successful. Now these
people have great high-paying careers only because they worked hard in both
situations. However, students do find their jobs get in their way of achieving
their education, but they need it in order to have an education.
Jobs aren't
the only thing that makes it hard for education to be some students' top
priority. At times emotional stress takes hold of us. When I first had to
move to my grandparent's house to go to high school, I went through a state
of depression. I was living faraway and missed living with my mom in the
house I had grown up in. I was attached to my old way of living and didn't
want change. This made a big impact on me and my schoolwork. At times I found
myself not wanting to do any work because all I could think of was home.
I would get stressed about what I would like to do and what I needed to do.
It was all very overwhelming; there was church, band, school, friends and
family all to balance out. I wanted to do all of them, but it's hard to choose
what's most important. Choosing one makes a problem for another. One time
I had to choose between being in band or choir. Each one had a problem with
the other such as which practice I should go to. Sometimes we value other
things more than education because without them we might suffer emotionally.
Physical
incapability can also make education hard to grasp. When my boyfriend was
a sophomore in high school he was hospitalized because of appendicitis, which
led to a hernia. He was out of school for weeks and really behind in his
schoolwork. Recovering was hard for him and he didn't feel like doing homework
because he would be in pain at times. He was also enrolled in an "AP" course,
which he had to drop and fail because of his absences. He was stressed out
and abandoned schoolwork for his health. We can't help not making education
our top priory sometimes because we just can't physically do some things.
Lack of
motivation can have serious effects on our study habits. We don't always
like all the subjects we take and for me it's math. Math has always been
a problem for me. It has never appealed to my interests or given me inspiration.
Whenever I didn't comprehend a subject in math I would just give up. I know
I can do math but I'd never been motivated. All those tedious problems that
look all the same and that just take forever to do, make me dislike math
even more. When I was in high school I've always had the worse luck with
math teachers. To me most of them couldn't teach in a way that's easy to
understand, didn't speak English well enough, and some could care less if
a student failed, ignoring ones' questions. I learned to teach my self-,
however I knew I couldn't learn everything, so that also led to my lack of
motivation. Another thing that brought about my lack of motivation was that
some teachers could care less about how one is doing in class. Why should
I care about a class if the teacher doesn't care about me? A person can become
unmotivated because of the classroom environment. If the environment is negative,
it affects the student.
Education
can't always be our top priority. We all have our own lives to live and we
value other things just as much as some do education. Sometimes our emotions
do hinder us from doing well, and physical pain does limit our ability to
succeed. Also the lack of motivation can make us turn into the wrong path
because we don't have interest. A person can only do as much as one can.
In the final paragraph the author explains: "This is a free country" (564).
Yes this country is a free country, but it also has its limits.
Work Cited
Palmieri, Nicholle. "Education
Is the Priority." A Reader for Developing Writers. Fifth Ed. Santi
V. Buscemi. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. (562-64).