This post has nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day.
Like most women, I’m pretty frustrated by men. Somehow men’s and women’s brains and bodies are wired differently, and that causes clashes. We try to figure each other out, it’s inevitable to wonder, yet any conclusion that comes along arrives at the very very end. The timing itself is inevitable: a conclusion is a conclusion.
In addition to talking to my professors and counselors about the purpose of being at college, I had a very real conversation with one of my best friends on this topic. (For the record, a professor that I previously had little respect for has given me the most compelling argument for the worthiness of this experience: you can’t know what’s original unless you’ve studied everything else that exists already. While not an immomentous task, it’s a perfectly logical one.) My friend and I, we weren’t completely unhampered by misunderstanding, since we’re both the type to love being correct, but I don’t think we’ve had such a good heated debate in a long time.
I agree that a good grade can show that you can keep up with deadlines, get work done, etc., and that perhaps people at our age need some sort of preparatory phase to understand ourselves, and college is a good environment for it, I don’t think that it’s for everyone. It necessarily can’t be for everyone–we’re all so different. Also, yes, a degree or two does make you more competitive in the job market, for most people it’s one of the only standardized signs of your competence. (See post for New Threats to Freedom Essay contest.) However, everyone has their own talents, and not all of those talents can be explored best in a college environment. Not only can class time be time wasted, but college is a stressful experience for people, and whatever values are reinforced by higher education, they can’t be some sort of objective truth about how humans work. Once you say, right, everyone learns differently and some people shouldn’t continue to be students, you get rid of this problem.
I’m not too sure what I’m trying to say. I’m playing devil’s advocate a tad, just to flush out two sides of an argument. At the same time, having a college degree is a concrete achievement, it’s something to fall back out so that you know whatever happens you won’t end up being “just” a waitress if acting doesn’t work out. But I don’t want to believe that that’s the best thing for me. I’m just that sick of academia.
My friends think that if I put any effort into studying at all, I would be able to learn things very easily. I believe them, but we all make choices. The hard part is understanding why we do things the way we do. Was it a juvenile lack of discipline, or ADD (I should be medicated), or depression, or laziness (I’ve been getting away with so little for so long)? I don’t feel like it’s any of those things, because sometimes things just seem right. When I’m having revealing conversations with people, and I have them a lot, I don’t feel guilty, like I’m supposed to be doing anything else. When I’m writing creatively, I never feel like I’m wasting time, I feel like other things are getting in the way of . . . just some crackling little voice in my throat that should be silky and powerful.
I’m writing a story in Chinese. Mother birds leave their eggs for longer stretches of time when their eggs are about to hatch. They can feel the chicks inside moving, and the warm air of the world is diffusing through that porcelain membrane. (You can’t see how something works by looking at it, sometimes you need to investigate it to know, don’t you?) Not sure where I’m heading with this.
