Every year, Tech students get a barrage of emails and in-class reminders reminding them of the all-important Fall Career Fair. With such a justifiably high focus towards the fair, there are some professors who should re-evaluate how they conduct classes during this important, and often life changing time to many students.
The Fall Career Fair is traditionally held during class hours over a two-day period. While we understand that companies must recruit during work hours, this timeline forces many students to forgo either a single class or even a day of classes to attend the fair in the hopes of gaining an interview for a co-op, internship, or full-employment.
Because of Tech’s pride and focus surrounding our excellent job statistics, and even more, because, as students, our years of intense education have led to this moment, no student should have to choose between jobs or grades, internships or mandatory attendance, etc.
We believe that professors could, for just two days, act more considerately. This is especially true in 3000/4000 level classes, or those classes with many graduating students. While it does not make sense for ENGL 1101 to change its schedule, perhaps upper level engineering classes, for example, could.
We would hope professors give an exception if they have mandatory attendance policies and not penalize students. Additionally, pop-quizzes should be strictly off limits, especially when in some classes, the number of students out-of-class is far greater than the number actually present.
What this calls for is not a complete restructure of classes or to pause the curriculum completely. We simply ask for greater awareness and acknowledgement of this time as being, not only extremely stressful, but also very much key to many students trying to gain employment.