Ok, I have been trying to get this written and posted for a few days now but every time I try, I end up getting super angry and it becomes a rambling mess. I leave for awhile and then think of something else and have to come back and add that too. So that being said, I apologize for anything that seems completely random within this rant. I will try and tie it all together as best I can.
I know I promised a rant on writing (or maybe I didn't specify, but it was going to be on useless essays) But I need to do this one first. This is another rant about higher education. Here we go!
When I talk about college here, I mean mostly the process of getting your bachelor's degree through a four-year program from a state university. I can't speak for the private universities that perhaps I should have gone to . . .
College has essentially defeated its own purpose. I was looking at scholarships today trying to find some money for study abroad next semester and I came across one that had an essay and the prompt was, "Explain your main purpose for attending college". I had to skip this one because it immediately lead me into this rant and the essay had a 250 word max. My answer was "to get a better job". Essentially, to help me prepare for life beyond school. However, when I thought about how that goal was going . . . well, it's not.
First major problem: College costs too much to be of any immediate benefit for most people. The vast majority of graduates that I know are still at home with their parents working jobs that don't require college degrees trying to pay off their loans. Their loans that were to pay for the schooling that was supposed to help them get a nice job that pays better than it would for someone without a college degree. Tens of thousands of dollars that are now preventing these people from being able to go out and start their lives. . .I do not understand. College is supposed to help you get a job and live your life, but it seems to just hold people back.
Second major problem: At large universities at least, no one is interested in helping you get a job. There are certain majors, like the business school here I know has its own career department that really helps their students, but for the most part its useless. I met with my adviser, who is typically pretty useful, and when I brought up not knowing what to do once I got out of school his response was "you have time." I do not see this as necessarily true. I will be gone next semester and then I will be a senior, that is not a lot of time. I had a discussion with a professor of mine who basically explained it as "you get a job and that leads you to another job and that happens until you find what you like." . . . this just sounds silly to me . . . more wasting time. I know a girl who is a senior and attempted to use career services. They told her that she had no chance of getting a decent job without going to grad school. This is not true. Grad school is typically another big waste of time and money. Grad school is only good if you know exactly what you want out of it. Otherwise you are just putting off life even more and wasting some more money. And for some people, that's good, they want to stay in school forever. For those who want to just live their life and not be stuck in this collegiate limbo anymore, it is just another annoyance.
~A day passes~
I just found myself worrying about my grades for this semester. I feel that I have not been doing my best in all of my classes because I do not care about them at all for the exception of a few of them on certain days. I'm doing really well in my sociology class but even that I don't give 100%. Then I thought to myself, what do these grades mean anyway? What good is an A if I didn't learn anything? I'm not saying I want to do poorly in my classes or that I want to fail, but I don't know what that A gets me. I'm not in elementary school anymore. I don't get a fun prize for doing well on my report card. Throughout grade school, your grades got you somewhere. Good grades in high school helped you get into college and get scholarships. Since these grades meant something, it was justifiable to take classes that had no meaning for you. But what are college grades good for? If you audit a class about something that you are truly interested in and you learn a whole bunch from that class but you get no grade because you only audited it, then you gained so much more than had you taken a class that you didn't care about and got an A in it. You learned nothing of value in that class you didn't care about but you got your precious A. Where does that A get you? That A doesn't get you a job because you don't care about that subject and you likely didn't learn anything that you will retain anyway. I already proved in high school that I can go to class and get good grades. I have the ability to suck it up and make it work. This is college, why is it seemingly the same deal as high school? I should be able to take classes that I care about and want to learn. Instead, I am taking classes for credits. In reality, I could easily finish my degree this year. However, even if I weren't going to Germany, I would not be able to graduate because I have not taken 120 credits or whatever the silly required amount is. My senior year will consist of 1 German class, my capstone project and 7 or 8 other courses. Those courses will have nothing to do with my major, they will just be empty credits. It is true that I could find some interesting courses that really give me some useful knowledge, but the university makes that so difficult. So many courses are for majors only or they have prerequisites. Most of the classes you can take are basic, may as well be high school, courses. It drives me insane.
When it comes down to it, my biggest problem is that I do not want to spend my life wasting my time. I have heard the argument that this setup of college is helping me because in the "real world" I will have to do things that I have no interest in and I will have to just go with it. Obviously this is partially true, I will always end up having to do some things that I don't want to do but I do not want to make a career out of it. I don't want a job that I hate going to every day. I don't want to feel upset all the time because I am wasting my time at a job I hate and have no interest in. If my job is going to be like my college "career", then I am going to be a very very unhappy person. I have no desire to live this way once I get out of college. I have never been so unhappy in my life and I refuse to continue this once I am done with college.
This comic from Amazingsuperpowers.com pretty much sums this all up.
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