With the school year almost over, many first-year Durham College students are looking back at their time at the school and reflecting. Some may have liked how it went, and some may not, but either way it was memorable.
For most students, though, Durham College is the only post-secondary institution they’ve attended. Their opinion on the school is going to be subjective, therefore, and should be weighted against something else to determine how to analyze their views. That counterweight is students at other schools.
Joshua Mungroop is a first-year student at Seneca College in Scarborough. He said the though he had a good time at the school, the workload and stress haven’t helped. “I started smoking,” he said. “I haven’t been getting as much sleep as I used too, either.”
Mungroop overall couldn’t find much fault with his school, besides the fact that a lot of his time there isn’t actually spent doing anything. “I have, like, three hour breaks. There’ll be a class from one to two, then three hours of not doing anything, then another one-hour class. It’s pretty bogus.”
Students at Durham College echoed that opinion. Many found their schedules too spacious. In some situations, students would have three hours of classes interspersed with six hours of breaks. “Its kind of inefficient,” said Durham College student Susan Brown. “When there’s plenty of time between classes like that, you run out of ways to burn through it.”
Things are a little bit different for the students at the Trent University campus in Peterborough. There Trent student Laura Prevoe says of her school, “Most of our time is outside of class. The way it goes, we get work, do it, hand it in, and then have free time. If only the food wasn’t so bad.”
Back at Seneca, Mungroop agrees. “There’s nothing good to eat. Nothing at all. What’s there is garbage,” he said.
Fortunately for DC students, the food both on and near the campus is much better received. Of twenty students asked, fourteen said they were satisfied with the offerings here, the only issue being the lack of variety. Asian food is the most longed-for on campus here.
When it comes to the work, classes, and teachers, DC is again favoured. “The workload isn’t too bad,” Brown said. “It’s not like it’s a walk in the park, but I can manage to get everything done and not get too bogged down.”
Both Mungroop and Prevoe at their respective schools said that though the workload wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t comfortable, and they could do without some of the teachers they had.
When walking the halls at Durham College you’ll occasionally hear people muttering about being frustrated by things here, be it schoolwork or classmates or any number of issues.
When compared to the words of first-year students at other institutions, though, these pale in comparison.
Things that are small issues here are large there. Things that are issues there don’t exist at all here.
We could have it worse.
