On Higher Education: Just Do It (But Not Right Now)

As a college student, I've noticed a lot of things that irritate me: early morning classes, slow buses, and bad coffee, to name a few. But the one thing that drives me into a frenzy of rage every time is the fact that there are so many students who refuse to put the work into their classes, who see college as four years of binge drinking, who don't want to be there. It baffles me that so many people would spend thousands of dollars on something that they could easily do for $20 at a bar.

Putting yourself in massive debt just to get any old degree slapped onto your name may seem cool now, but it's not gonna be so cool when you can't buy that sweet new car because oh wait, you have to pay off your college loans. 

Why are you here? Why? I mean, it's great that you're making it easier to get an A in classes and everything (honestly in some classes you just have to show up and you impress the pants off your professor), but you're also decreasing the value of a college degree. Plus you're making that whole hope for humanity thing a little more difficult.

The thing is, however, that thousands of people didn't just suddenly get the idea to hop out of high school and throw themselves into college life without considering what college even meant. There's this new expectation that going to college is simply the next step, a branch of high school. And the percentage of people who actually want to be in high school is VERY VERY LOW, thus making the percentage of people who want to be in college the same. Classes turn into a competition of who can not do the reading more, and who can sit in silence and make awkward eye contact the longest.

During my first semester of freshman year, the one girl in my class who raised her hand to answer questions and seemed, y'know, enthusiastic about school, literally got mocked and picked on by at least half the class. That doesn't just make class miserable; it's straight up cruel. The fact that we have to tell adults not to bully the Hermiones of the world is really depressing.

So to the people who don't want to be in college, guess what? You don't have to be. Go party every night for a year until you get sick of throwing up jager shots. Go get a part time job at a restaurant and suffer through bad tips and obnoxious customers. Go on Breaking Bad marathons until your eyes bleed. You're an adult. You have the freedom to choose how you want to live your life--even if your parents strongly encourage you to do the whole college thing, they can't force you to.

However, while my original thought was that some people just aren't meant for college, I've had somewhat of an attitude shift in the past year. The biggest difference in college that I've noticed is that you don't just learn a bunch of facts and spit them back out on an exam (well, sometimes you do, *cough science cough*); you learn to think critically, to think outside yourself, to have a different worldview.

In my Women's Studies class, I had already established that I was well versed in feminism. It made sense, seeing as a was a woman who had experienced varying degrees of sexism in the past. But when we looked at institutionalized racism and how race affects our experiences as people, I realized that up until that point, I was a "yeah girl" of racism: I knew it was bad, I was all "yeah, that really sucks," but I hadn't stopped to think about how it feels to be a racial minority, to experience racial injustice every single day.

And really, I wouldn't have thought this way until somebody pointed it out to me. It didn't make me a bad person before; it just made me a little more uneducated.

My point is, if you can financially swing it, you should go to college. Just not immediately. We're a generation of right nows, but in the end, that does more harm than good. Are you really going to remember what that one professor said about literary theory when you were blacked out the night before? It's amazing how much more the brain can remember when you actually want to be there and are eager to learn. Sure, it sounds cheesey, but I think we can all afford some cheese when we're shelling out $20,000. At some point, you will be ready to go to college. Maybe it won't happen until you're 60 years old, in which case, go when you're 60.

Every single returning adult student I've met has been excited to do the reading, to go to class, to just be there. Honestly, it's refreshing. And I give them mad props for setting a livelier tone to the class.

If you have the opportunity, go to college. But don't fall into the expectation that everyone's ready for college straight out of high school. That's kind of like saying you're ready for a 27 mile marathon right after a jog around the block.

Namaste.