#HBC | Acrostic
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- Jan 31, 2010
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Link to original post: [drupal=3051]Soapbox: On College[/drupal]
18.4 million American students are projected to have enrolled in colleges this year. The statistic indicates a 3.1 million increase since 2000: an increase that is three times the amount of the previous decade. Without a doubt, more and more high school graduates are being shipped off to college. Many of these students implicitly know why they are going to college: make the six-figure salary, marry a "sophisticated" spouse, and to make mommy and daddy proud. Very few high school students know how the real world works or even how college works. In fact, many students don’t even know who they really are as they have yet to face hardships that will test who they are as a human being. As more students begin to filter into college, more trees need to be chopped down in order to serve as commemoration for four years of beer pong, cramming, and mediocre effort put into classes. There are much deeper reasons behind the increasing demand for the college diploma that exceed the simple economic expectations of supply and demand.
When new innovations come out, we often embrace it with open arms. After all, a gadget that comes with an extra utility enables us to get tasks done faster, therefore allowing us more time for rest and relaxation. This is especially true for computers which made work much more efficient in terms of processing and communication. It seems foreign to believe that even the most simple of messages depended on the U.S. Postal Service or a courier whose job was to hand out such messages to addressed people. If such a job existed, the computer would have surely made such a position obsolete. It doesn’t take a college education in order to work a computer. But it might be required to grow genetically altered strains of grass that grow slowly and retain the ideal color for the front lawn. Many jobs would quickly become obsolete. No one in suburbia would need “foreign trained lawn care professionals” to mow their front lawn and companies would seriously need to redo how their business was originally done. In times of change, many people will get shafted. Often times these people would have made a decent five-figure salary out of hard work and long hours. It is possible that this could have been your friend, your neighbor, or even you.
The Justice Department this past month investigated Monsanto over unfair policies. Monsanto, a company that designs genetically altered crops is currently the number one business in the agriculture market. It is notoriously known for forcing farmers to buy new seeds, making it illegal to regrow the seeds that develop from the last harvest. Frankly put this is absurd as it has always been a tradition for farmers to save seeds and regrow them when the soil is ready. Monsanto however with its scientist and lawyers have decided to rewrite the laws of human nature with their engineered products. Apparently having the best product on the market allows you to change centuries of human history. The college diploma has the potential to gap the difference between screwing over other people and being the person who gets screwed over. Behind every innovation there is profit and loss. A scientist who makes a new breakthrough that gains him fame and fortune could screw over a whole sector of the economy. Much like how computers reduced departments that deal with payroll and messaging into being a small-man team.
Regardless of what you decide to major in or study, it is important to think in terms of long term and short term benefits. It’s important to enjoy your studies, but it’s also important to acknowledge the fact that your field may not contain viable skills that will help you in the job market. Numerous people who major in the liberal arts apply to law school, simply because they cannot realistically attain a high income job with their bachelor’s degree. College is an expensive investment that you or your parents could have used to set up a small business or a deli. If you are not increasing your potential capital, then it is a wasted investment. I’m not denying you nights of beer pong or a night out with friends. But those nights out have to be well deserved as that is time being spent from attaining a better future.
In the end I’m sure you’re a great person. After all, you’re reading my blog. But it doesn’t matter what I think. It also doesn’t matter what you think. After you get out of college employers are going to judge how you wasted four years of life in academia. No matter where you go or who you decide to work for, you will always be working underneath someone else. That someone will determine the worth of your potential, the worth of your stature, and the worth of your resume. As much as you delude yourself into believing you’re special and different from everyone else, there will be at least nine hundred resumes from other applicants stating the same exact thing. It could be possible that the one class you got a D in because you thought it was “b.s.” could cause your application to hit the paper shredder before a single person sees it. It could be possible that one night out of town could have cost you the one point on the exam you needed in order to get a lucrative job offer. On this note, I would like to contrast what I’m stating to an overused lie, “Doing something is better than doing nothing at all.” Here is my addendum to the statement. It is importance to excel at a few things than to waste your time doing mundane things. In college there is room for exploration and involvement. But it’s important to find a few things you like and excel at rather than choosing things that bore you and jeopardize time that can be spent improving your potential (working at McDonalds has small income benefits compared to fitting an extra class into your schedule [$900 value for $0]). The key word to college is efficiency.
Despite best intentions, putting in your best face often leads to that face being smashed in and crapped on repeatedly by society. Being fired from a job, failing a class, and being mocked can often times make you question how you spent your past four years in college. The humiliation and failure can sometimes make you lose all motivation as the pain of loss seems to outweigh the small accomplishments you may get from actually succeeding. Human beings are frail and fail all the time. It’s not important to measure the fall, but to witness the small steps that are taken in the comeback. Human beings are not fascinating because they are perfect. We are all unique because we have our imperfections and weaknesses. There are times when we have triumphed and other times we have failed. These events are gradually chiseled to form who we are as people and how we relate to the rest of society. The true difference between a success story and a depressed story is often times in the ending. And those pages are written by you and me. It is our duties as primary authors to give our lives happy endings. No one else should tell you differently. If anything should be stressed out of this whole mess, the value of a college diploma should never outweigh the value of a human life. Even if that person eventually became Dick Cheney or the guy who finalized the designs for the iPad.
18.4 million American students are projected to have enrolled in colleges this year. The statistic indicates a 3.1 million increase since 2000: an increase that is three times the amount of the previous decade. Without a doubt, more and more high school graduates are being shipped off to college. Many of these students implicitly know why they are going to college: make the six-figure salary, marry a "sophisticated" spouse, and to make mommy and daddy proud. Very few high school students know how the real world works or even how college works. In fact, many students don’t even know who they really are as they have yet to face hardships that will test who they are as a human being. As more students begin to filter into college, more trees need to be chopped down in order to serve as commemoration for four years of beer pong, cramming, and mediocre effort put into classes. There are much deeper reasons behind the increasing demand for the college diploma that exceed the simple economic expectations of supply and demand.
When new innovations come out, we often embrace it with open arms. After all, a gadget that comes with an extra utility enables us to get tasks done faster, therefore allowing us more time for rest and relaxation. This is especially true for computers which made work much more efficient in terms of processing and communication. It seems foreign to believe that even the most simple of messages depended on the U.S. Postal Service or a courier whose job was to hand out such messages to addressed people. If such a job existed, the computer would have surely made such a position obsolete. It doesn’t take a college education in order to work a computer. But it might be required to grow genetically altered strains of grass that grow slowly and retain the ideal color for the front lawn. Many jobs would quickly become obsolete. No one in suburbia would need “foreign trained lawn care professionals” to mow their front lawn and companies would seriously need to redo how their business was originally done. In times of change, many people will get shafted. Often times these people would have made a decent five-figure salary out of hard work and long hours. It is possible that this could have been your friend, your neighbor, or even you.
The Justice Department this past month investigated Monsanto over unfair policies. Monsanto, a company that designs genetically altered crops is currently the number one business in the agriculture market. It is notoriously known for forcing farmers to buy new seeds, making it illegal to regrow the seeds that develop from the last harvest. Frankly put this is absurd as it has always been a tradition for farmers to save seeds and regrow them when the soil is ready. Monsanto however with its scientist and lawyers have decided to rewrite the laws of human nature with their engineered products. Apparently having the best product on the market allows you to change centuries of human history. The college diploma has the potential to gap the difference between screwing over other people and being the person who gets screwed over. Behind every innovation there is profit and loss. A scientist who makes a new breakthrough that gains him fame and fortune could screw over a whole sector of the economy. Much like how computers reduced departments that deal with payroll and messaging into being a small-man team.
Regardless of what you decide to major in or study, it is important to think in terms of long term and short term benefits. It’s important to enjoy your studies, but it’s also important to acknowledge the fact that your field may not contain viable skills that will help you in the job market. Numerous people who major in the liberal arts apply to law school, simply because they cannot realistically attain a high income job with their bachelor’s degree. College is an expensive investment that you or your parents could have used to set up a small business or a deli. If you are not increasing your potential capital, then it is a wasted investment. I’m not denying you nights of beer pong or a night out with friends. But those nights out have to be well deserved as that is time being spent from attaining a better future.
In the end I’m sure you’re a great person. After all, you’re reading my blog. But it doesn’t matter what I think. It also doesn’t matter what you think. After you get out of college employers are going to judge how you wasted four years of life in academia. No matter where you go or who you decide to work for, you will always be working underneath someone else. That someone will determine the worth of your potential, the worth of your stature, and the worth of your resume. As much as you delude yourself into believing you’re special and different from everyone else, there will be at least nine hundred resumes from other applicants stating the same exact thing. It could be possible that the one class you got a D in because you thought it was “b.s.” could cause your application to hit the paper shredder before a single person sees it. It could be possible that one night out of town could have cost you the one point on the exam you needed in order to get a lucrative job offer. On this note, I would like to contrast what I’m stating to an overused lie, “Doing something is better than doing nothing at all.” Here is my addendum to the statement. It is importance to excel at a few things than to waste your time doing mundane things. In college there is room for exploration and involvement. But it’s important to find a few things you like and excel at rather than choosing things that bore you and jeopardize time that can be spent improving your potential (working at McDonalds has small income benefits compared to fitting an extra class into your schedule [$900 value for $0]). The key word to college is efficiency.
Despite best intentions, putting in your best face often leads to that face being smashed in and crapped on repeatedly by society. Being fired from a job, failing a class, and being mocked can often times make you question how you spent your past four years in college. The humiliation and failure can sometimes make you lose all motivation as the pain of loss seems to outweigh the small accomplishments you may get from actually succeeding. Human beings are frail and fail all the time. It’s not important to measure the fall, but to witness the small steps that are taken in the comeback. Human beings are not fascinating because they are perfect. We are all unique because we have our imperfections and weaknesses. There are times when we have triumphed and other times we have failed. These events are gradually chiseled to form who we are as people and how we relate to the rest of society. The true difference between a success story and a depressed story is often times in the ending. And those pages are written by you and me. It is our duties as primary authors to give our lives happy endings. No one else should tell you differently. If anything should be stressed out of this whole mess, the value of a college diploma should never outweigh the value of a human life. Even if that person eventually became Dick Cheney or the guy who finalized the designs for the iPad.
