Saturday, July 5, 2014

I'm Wasting the Best Years of My Life in College

This summer has given me a lot of time to think about my life goals and where I'm headed. I've had a lot of time to self-reflect and sort of check in to see if I'm still on track to my original goals.

I would say that I am, but the present is starting to look quite a bit different than what I thought it would look like. I had a lot of preconceived notions about college life before I ever set foot on campus. I assumed college would be a place filled with endless opportunities and supportive administration, however I'm finding the opposite to be true.

College has turned into that full time job that I dread going to. I dream of the day when I'll be finished for good so I can get started on my real dreams. Instead of launching me forward, I feel like college has just held me back.

Whether my degree is useless or not, college was something I felt strongly about. I can't deny the fact that I'm definitely better off now than I was ten years ago, but I refuse to be satisfied. There's always room for improvement.

I guess what the point I'm trying to make is that I'm eager to get on to the next thing. I'm an impatient person and I work fast so I expect immediate results. The best way I can explain it is when I finish an assignment for a class that is due at a certain time (with no exceptions) I expect the assignment to be graded and promptly returned to me with the same haste. This almost never happens but I still can't get over the frustration.

I had high expectations for this "Institution of Higher Learning." There was a time that University is all I talked about. I worked so hard to get here only to find out that it's not really living up to what I imagined.

Being a transfer student has its perks and disadvantages. The biggest perk is that I won't be in quite as much debt as the people who started as freshmen. The downside of this is getting credits to match up and getting professors and administration to care about my fate.

I don't know what it's like to be an adopted teenager, but I feel like being a transfer student in a room full of freshmen might feel like trying to get adopted at 14 when all the couples want infants.

I haven't learned anything significant in my classes. The education I'm receiving doesn't match half the things I learned at my community college. I guess I just thought there would be more. It's like I waited in line all night for a live show only to realize the artist is lip syncing.

Maybe our college degrees don't help us get jobs because we don't actually learn anything. I was lucky enough to delay college until my mid twenties. Doing this allowed me to get "real world" experiences that college simply can't teach you.

Professors of the world: Just because you assign reading doesn't mean you've taught anything!

If I can educate myself just reading, what do I need school for? Why am I in thousands of dollars worth of debt? It's a fucked system and now I'm beginning to understand all those people who protested college. Had they given concrete reasons instead of the tired, "You don't need a degree to be successful" spiel, then perhaps I would have listened.




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