Get Your Associate Degree

By Rob Jenkins. Lately my college, like many other two-year schools, has been making an effort to encourage students to stay for two years and earn an associate degree before transferring. That can be a hard sell, since we’re primarily a “portal” institution, and many of our students make no bones about the fact that they want to transfer as soon as possible—in many cases, after one year. Even those who stay two years often can’t be bothered to go to the extra “trouble” of applying for graduation, despite the clear advantages of having an actual degree to show for those two years. Perhaps, though, if the essay below is any indication, the word is starting to get through. This was actually a final exam essay in one of my ENGL 1101 sections this semester. The student wrote it in one hour (per departmental instruction), based on one of three prompts that I provided. More...