Social Media Assignments In College Classes Are Bullshit

A Broad a semester7 years ago

It wasn’t so long ago that you could show up to a class and see a sign posted on the door telling you that your discussion was canceled and your section would reconvene at its regular time next Wednesday. The world evolved, and professors started emailing us about cancelations and giving out-of-class assignments that would have been impossible just a few years prior.

And while I’ve seen it for the last few years, it’s getting more and more troubling that professors have started handing out social media assignments. All this talk of safe spaces on campuses across the country, but they have taken it up on themselves to violate the most sacred one.

Let’s be real: social media as a whole is no longer cool. Everyone is on social media, and by definition, exclusivity is a key cool factor. That’s part of why joining a fraternity is so attractive. But with everyone and their grandmother (literally) on social media, it, as an platform, has lost some shine.

Facebook is overrun by annoying relatives and couples from your hometown that got pregnant too early and fell into pyramid schemes. Twitter upped the character count and now removes posts and suspends users at a rate that was previously unimaginable. Moms realized their daughters had finstas and started creating fake accounts just to see what they’re actually up to. Snapchat has been in a state of chaos lately. All of that said, social media is still for the youths, so keep your goddamn school work off of it.

HOW DARE YOU tell me to do an assigned reading and then post “no less than five tweets analyzing the texts, using the hashtag #WRT371.” What world is this? I and I alone get to decide on what I post to my social media. Academic tweets are so far off brand for me that you might as well demand I start posting my political rants on Facebook. You want me to turn into the guy that starts posts with, “I usually don’t post about things like this, but…?” Of course not, because literally no one likes that guy.

We got into a class debate last year about the merits of following updates regarding our major on social media as opposed to paying to read academic journals. Personally, I just don’t do either. I don’t care enough. I’m more than happy to read the assigned texts that were originally written in 1993, but have no desire to read excerpts from it in-between shitposts from by buddy Greg. The only point that I made in the debate was, “Social media is supposed to be fun. I don’t think that people’s work is fun.” My professor didn’t accept my argument, which makes some sense — she’s spent her life in academia, so her ideas about fun and school and work are toxically intertwined. She just didn’t get it, “it” meaning work or social media. That’s the problem.

Having us turn in assignments online makes perfect sense. It’s easier for everybody. I don’t need to spend 5 cents per page printing in the library, which is great. There is, however, just no reason for an entire class to follow you on Instagram and like the pictures of our trip to an artisanal dairy farm. The addition of this work to my play is not worth the participation points in my eyes. We already went to the artisanal dairy farm, so I know how they make goat cheese. How could you possibly ask me for more?

Are professors on a quest for social media clout? Are they trying to impress their peers and colleagues across the country by inflating their follower and like counts? Are they just as vain as the rest of us but abusing their position of power to seem cooler online to their chosen audience? I might actually respect this move if it didn’t directly affect me.

I can’t be the only guy taking crazy pills on this one; it must seem bananas to everyone else as well. I do not think that it’s just a case of professors trying to relate to the current generation of students and make lessons more engaging. I believe that they’re just as caught up in this social media fly trap as I am.

This direct line from professor to student has already gone too far. We have to prioritize expressing how much we hate it..

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