Generation X Goes to College: An Eye-Opening Account of Teaching in Postmodern America

This is an incredible, amusing, horrifying, yet true story, in which all names have been changed to protect the guilty. It tells how the author, a journalist turned college professor, came face to face with Generation X: jaded, unachieving, highly demanding yet lacking any respect for standards or intelligence. These insouciant scholars wore bored looks, ample attitudes, and reversed baseball caps. They expected to earn top grades by just showing up in class, which they interrupted with their portable TVs, cellular phones, or personal pagers. For his own survival as a teacher, Sacks decided to play a bizarre, cynical game: The Sandbox Experiment, in which he catered to the whims of his students as though they were kindergartners. It worked: Sacks became a great success as a ‘teacher’, got tenure, and now continues to ‘teach’ at the strange, appalling institution he calls ‘The College’.