Reflective Preface: On Self-Entitlement in College - Essay Example

? Reflective Preface: On Self-En ment in College 9 September Word Count of Preface: 288 Word Count of Persuasive Paper: 1618 Preface Self-entitlement, is it a positive or negative practice among college students? This is the question that I wanted to examine in my essay. My goal is to understand self-entitlement, specifically its causes and effects on students’ work attitudes and behaviors. At first, I wanted to know the harmful impacts of self-entitlement on students, but as I conducted my research, I realized that it is not a black-and-white issue. Self-assessment can have bad effects, when students develop laziness in doing their work and yet they demand high grades from their professors, and when students treat their professors rudely, in their attempt to fight for higher grades. However, self-entitlement is not that bad, if it can be used to improve a person’s self-esteem and to pursue integrity. I imagine my readers taking away a critical attitude toward self-entitlement, so that they themselves will reflect on their self-entitlement habits. Self-entitlement is not a simple issue or practice because it can be turned into something good for all stakeholders, specifically students, teachers and society. On the one hand, self-entitled students may be too narcissistic that they lose their realistic sense in assessing their actual performance. On the other hand, self-entitled students can be steered to harness their integrity. This can be done through exposing them to community service, as Hoffman and Wallach showed in their study, and training them to adopt rigorous work attitudes and practices. Self-entitlement, if connected to self-esteem, can also help students be confident in fighting for their ideas and beliefs, as long as they do it in a courteous and level-headed manner. Self-entitlement does not have to be maladaptive behavior, if it can be converted to integrity, a principle that enables students to match principles, expectations, and outcomes. Self-Entitlement: A Positive or Negative Practice among College Students? When some teachers complain about self-entitled students who bully their way to get good grades, is this the same self-entitlement that is also connected to self-esteem? Apparently, the answer to this question is yes because self-entitlement can include both constructive and maladaptive dimensions, depending on who defines it and for what purposes (Greenberger et al. 1194). This paper examines if self-entitlement is a positive or negative practice in higher education. It uses four sources, two from popular references and the rest from scholarly resources, to understand the complexity of self-entitlement. Self-entitlement has two major aspects of individual (personality) and social sources (family, culture, and society) and implications, but it can be steered to contribute to the advancement of the principle of integrity, which can, in turn, lead to integration among aspects of ambition, self-esteem, high-quality standards and outcomes, and pro-social practices. My personal experience of self-entitlement is not an entirely negative or positive one, but helped me become a more critical-minded student, writer, and speaker. One time, I was given a low grade on an essay that I felt deserved a higher grade. Before I went to my teacher, I made sure that I wrote down my points and the basis for these arguments. I also prepared samples of my work to point out that I did not miss any of the required parts of the paper. Furthermore, when I spoke with my teacher, I was polite and patient. I made sure that I listened to her too. During this conversation, I took down notes of her comments and suggestions. She allowed me to revise the paper and I got a higher grade afterwards. This experience suggests that self-entitlement does not start and end with complaints and bullying, but rather, it begins with self-assessment, goes through argumentation, and ends with a changed self- one who knows more about speaking, writing, and learning from one’s weaknesses. Several sources underscore that one of the characteristics of self-entitlement is narcissism, one of the “cons” of self-entitlement, which can lead to an inflated sense of self-love that can adversely affect work ethics and social interaction. A source highlights that narcissism is increasing among adolescents. The Daily Mail article, “How College Students Think They are More Special than Ever,” describes the results of the American Freshman Survey. Psychologist Jean Twenge and her co-researchers discovered from the survey that for the past forty years, more and more students see themselves as “above average” in “academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence” (“How College Students” para.4). Young generations nowadays see highly of themselves compared to older generations. Another source underscores the negative effects of self-entitlement on students. Elayne Clift, an adjunct faculty member at a number of colleges in New England, complains about the rise of self-entitled habits that affect the quality of student outcomes: “….we are all struggling with the same frightening decline in student performance and academic standards at institutions of higher learning” (Clift para.6). She believes that self-entitlement has produced belligerent students. When narcissism drives self-entitlement, it can produce negative attitudes and behaviors among students that affect class standing and relationships. Other sources emphasize that narcissism can lead to reduced other-centeredness and questionable work ethics, the social dimensions of the “cons” of self-entitlement. Twenge is concerned that self-entitlement is related to poor work habits. She notes that there is a “decline” in “the amount of time spent studying, with little more than a third of students saying they study for six or more hours a week compared to almost half of all students claiming the same in the late 1980s” (“How College Students” para.8). The inverse relationship between self-entitlement and hard work signifies that self-entitled students may think that they do not need to study so hard anymore because they can pressure their teachers to give in to their unfounded demands. One more “con” of self-entitlement is that it can lead to poor empathy and cooperation skills, according to the study of August Hoffman and Julie Wallach. Dr. Hoffman is a professor of Psychology at Compton College and California State University, while Wallach is a student at California State University. They hypothesized that self-entitled students tend to be exploitative of others because they expect them to do something for them (Hoffman and Wallach 82). The next harmful effect of self-entitlement is unethical work habits. Clift notes that self-entitled students influence teachers to conduct disreputable actions: “Too often the balance sheet, educator apathy, and a fear of resolving difficult situations lead to irresponsible practices such as encouraging grade inflation and ignoring violations of academic integrity” (Clift para.9). When teachers give grades that do not reflect the actual output of their students, they are perpetuating self-entitlement and its consequences. Ellen Greenberger and colleagues from the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California-Irvine and Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand further discovered that self-entitled students tend to cheat in class or to be involved in plagiarism (Greenberger et al. 1201). Self-entitlement indicates potential breakdown in teacher-student boundaries that have negative effects on their relationships. Though self-entitlement has a bad image, some sources think that it can lead to something good, especially when it result to the “pros” of self-entitlement- integrated self-esteem, ambition, and positive work habits, thereby enhancing integrity. Children who have high self-confidence, due to their sense of self-entitlement, can use it to enhance their work habits. Greenberger et al. note the possibility that self-entitlement can be a coping mechanism in college because of high demands in school (1194). Students can use self-entitlement to motivate them to work harder in class. Instead of seeing self-entitlement as something that they can use to abuse others, they can use it to advance their academic skills and knowledge. Moreover, self-entitlement can drive success. Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, who wrote several papers on self-esteem studies, states that many successful people have high self-esteem (“How College Students” para.21). Though he is not sure between the direct connection between self-esteem and success, this paper asserts that self-esteem in self-entitlement can boost ambition, but ambition must be mediated with good work ethics. Self-entitlement, however, can be particularly problematic if it has underlying social causes. Twenge asserts that self-entitlement has environmental causes and contributors. She mentions parents, media, and culture as some of the origins of the self-entitled mindset (“How College Students” para.18). When parents and society emphasize the importance of appearance and material success, students are often pressured to pass or get high grades the easy way. Teachers and parents have a large role in nurturing critical mindsets and strong work ethics among their students and children, respectively. Greenberger et al. underline the role of parents in promoting self-entitlement among their children. They assert that “parents who have very high achievement expectations for their children and use social comparisons to motivate or guide their pursuit of excellence” (Greenberger et al. 1194). An example is a parent who leads by example through showing her son that integrity is about following high-quality work standards and showing the best results because of hard work and commitment. Teachers and parents can use their relationships with their students/children to help the latter know and practice good work habits, where they are aware of and implement integrity in everything they do. Through knowing the value and effects of ambition and hard work, self-entitlement can lead to favorable ethical results. Another source implies that self-entitlement can also improve pro-social practices. Hoffman and Wallach studied the effect of service learning on self-entitlement. Their sampling included 52 undergraduate students, who were randomly allocated to experimental and control groups. The experimental group volunteered for a community gardening services program (Hoffman and Wallach 86). Findings showed that the experimental group rated higher on community service attitudes and lower in self-entitlement compared to the control group (Hoffman and Wallach 87). Community service enhanced their sense of civic responsibility. The study indicates that it is possible to train self-entitled students to connect their self-importance to wider social responsibility. Their integrity can be raised if they can see that their actions and how they cooperate with others can result to greater good in society. Instead of using others for self-gain, they can learn to see one another as producers of net benefits for their communities. Such a transition from self-centeredness to civic responsibility, however, is not something automatic, but facilitated through projects such as what Hoffman and Wallach conducted. Moreover, another example is using self-entitlement in peer evaluations of work. Practicing peer tutorials and feedback can be an effective way of knowing that class interactions can lead to learning and learning can produce higher quality of work in school. Essentially, to turn self-entitlement’s negative effects around, it must be based on hard work and systematic changes in thinking and activities. These sources show that self-entitlement has a generally negative image among scholars, especially teachers, because it can result to narcissism and poor work ethics and academic outcomes. However, in my case, I believe that it can be changed to be focused on integrity, where self-entitlement can be a positive practice. If self-entitled students have high self-esteem, then this esteem can be shifted to meet actual individual and social expectations, so that the gap between perceptions and reality can be decreased. I believe that students should and can use self-entitlement to work harder and smarter, so that they can attain their ambition in life. I assert that self-entitlement is a bad practice if it results to poor ethical attitudes and behaviors at school, but it can be a good practice if it focuses on being ambitious and following high-quality work standards at the same time. Works Cited Clift, Elayne. “From Students, a Misplaced Sense of Entitlement.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (27 Mar. 2011). Web. 1 Sept. 2013. Greenberger, Ellen, Lessard, Jared, Chen, Chuansheng, and Susan P. Farruggia. “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 37: 1193–1204. Web. 1 Sept. 2013. Hoffman, August, and Julie Wallach. “Reducing Self-Entitlement Attitudes through Service Learning.” The Community College Enterprise: 81-91. Web. 1 Sept. 2013. “How College Students Think They are more Special than Ever: Study Reveals Rocketing Sense of Entitlement on U.S. campuses.” Daily Mail (5 Jan. 2013). Web. 1 Sept. 2013. Read More