Excuse me, do you have this analogy in Call of Duty?

Over at Scatterplot, Drek points to a blog post by John Scalzi that likens being born as a straight white male to playing a video game like World of Warcraft on the lowest difficulty setting. Here’s a taste:

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

…

[I]t’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.

And maybe at this point you say, hey, I like a challenge, I want to change my difficulty setting! Well, here’s the thing: In The Real World, you don’t unlock any rewards or receive any benefit for playing on higher difficulty settings. The game is just harder, and potentially a lot less fun. And you say, okay, but what if I want to replay the game later on a higher difficulty setting, just to see what it’s like? Well, here’s the other thing about The Real World: You only get to play it once. So why make it more difficult than it has to be? Your goal is to win the game, not make it difficult.

I like this analogy, but I wish it was presented through something like Call of Duty or Madden that a wider variety of (likely male) students spend their time playing.

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Busy students

Related to my recent post on students in the real world, I’ve had a lot of students over the years who were busy, whether with sports, work, or Greek activities (some of them even spend time on school!).  I also have also, however, had a few students who are so busy that I get tired just thinking of their schedules.  These students sometimes have multiple jobs, children, or both, yet manage to maintain a high level of academic success.  In many ways, they remind me of a friend that I had in high school who studied more than anybody I knew and also worked around 40 hours a week on a farm doing fun things like castrating baby pigs (yes, I grew up in a rural area).

Beyond both of these groups I’ve also had a lot of students who believe they are busy but whose schedules are filled with video games like Call of Duty and Madden and important social events like trips to the bar.  I’m not trying to say that these things are not important, but not having time to work on a paper because you have two jobs is qualitatively different than not having time to work on a paper because you were busy playing Call of Duty.

What I wonder is whether sharing the work schedules of my super-busy students with my pseudo-busy students would have any effect on their thoughts about time management.  Would seeing what a single parent has to deal with in order to get a paper done on time, for example, give others an appreciation for the amount of time that they actually have to do as they see fit?  Or would it have the effect that thinking about these schedules has on me and simply make them tired (and in need of a nap before their next round of Call of Duty?

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