Whenever I read an article, it always starts off with something that made the writer want to speak about it in the first place. But I feel like with a topic like this, I'd rather be frank.
I have been out of school for about two years now. After high school finished, I, like many of my peers and friends immediately went to college. Whether it be technical, community, or a traditional 4 year school. There's a sentiment that is prevalent within our generation that in order to be someone in life, in order to achieve anything one must go through an extended amount of years in education, accumulate student loan debt, graduate and if you chose correctly get a job that will stabilize you financially and luckily keep you motivated to do it for the rest of your life. However, there's also a cognitive dissonance to this idea because while we think there's only one way to go about our lives, we have been brought up with a mentality that we can be and do anything. Nothing is impossible, nothing is too out of reach because we are unique individuals unlike any other. Unfortunately, things don't always work the way we want them to which leads to a kind of resentment that we were promised this notion, this lifestyle that is not always conceivable to everyone.Feeling robbed of an idealistic life that doesn't exist. It's lucky to even get a job and be self-sustaining these days.
The most unsettling about all of this and one of the reasons that I dropped out of college (3 times, to be precise) was because it wasn't satisfying. There was something missing and I didn't know what. Mind you while I took basic core classes I also took others that inspired my interest like painting and psychology 101. But like every other class, it wasn't the monotonous timbre or the style of the professor which irked me-- by then I wasn't even thinking about how much each textbook cost and how rarely it was used unless you avidly stuck to reading a chapter each night and putting what you read into context. Into investigating it further.
It was about the pace, the carelessness. In less than two weeks you had to memorize and engrave thoughts in your head not because they were necessarily important, no real reason, except for the purpose of it being on a test that would be crucial for you to ace in order to pass. Only to discard all of that information as soon as the test is over and on to the next thing. It's no longer about the interest in actually learning, it's not about the richness and fulfilling feeling that I often got when finally comprehending something and expanding my knowledge, opening up a shelve to put yet another tool in my brain that I could use for later resource; whether it be to give insight into a conversation, or to be a window for more questions. There's a misconception that the more educated you are the more intellectual you are. Or rather, you can't be one without the other. While I only have my experience to base this off of, I've seen this not to be the case. Most of the people that I spoke with in college seemed bored or overly driven for the strangest reasons. Usually the responses were similar either
1. their parents were paying for everything therefore they felt obligated to do this
2. they wanted a comfortable job, they didn't want to be paid minimum wage doing manual labor for the rest of their lives
While these reasons are understandable, the majority seemed stuck in the limbo of just getting by. Everything seemed rushed, doing the bare minimum in order to be one step closer to getting it over with and this is not unjustified. College is a stressful place especially if you're juggling that with a part time job and whatever else you have on your plate.
But the genuine lack of passion to learn not just to earn a degree but for the plain reason that you want more enlightenment, because the amount of ignorance in the world is becoming more common, because one of biggest gifts of being human and alive is that we can go beyond just animal instinct and sentience and extend our horizons left me feeling empty and disillusioned.
Like creativity it seems that the educational system has stifled sincere thirst for knowledge and replaced it with obeying whatever is thrown your way in order to get that reward at the finishing line.
Some of the smartest people I've spoken with that have interesting and refreshing thoughts on both themselves and the world dropped out of high school and wouldn't call themselves scholars or intellectuals on any level if you asked them while others that did end up going to university often come off as pretentious in dialogue and when pressed to explain and discuss their idea of thought often displayed a defensive attitude and almost dogmatic explanations to concepts that they themselves didn't seem to fully understand much less grasp in order to give a concise reason why they believed them in the first place. It's disappointing to see people not really think for themselves in an environment that is supposed to fuel individuality so we can further ourselves as a society and not get stuck in the dark ages.
However, with all of this being said I do think that going to school is important and if you have the money and time then I encourage you to by all means go to college. While I do critique it for the absence of actual avocation for knowledge and in turn becoming just another system for the making of docile citizens I do think it's important to want to make something out of yourself. To pursue a career that will reap the greatest benefits for you and in turn give you something that perhaps no one in your family has ever achieved.
I just believe not to take it as the emblem of all savvy pursuits. I learned more from checked-out books from libraries than I did sitting in a classroom.
While I intend to eventually go back to school and finish something or other, I'll be going with a different mindset and that everyone should too which is that if you're really excited about learning and expanding your knowledge on any which subject, you are the bearer of your own limitations. You don't have to stop understanding just because class is over.
thank you for reading.
sincerely,
your humble narrator.
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