College

When I go to college, should I take an English course or a History course first? There are so many that sound interesting!

But maybe I should take a class in something useful, like computers. Then maybe I could get a better job and not have to work so much overtime to pay for school.

But suppose this is my only chance to take a class!

I've always wanted to go to college. But when I graduated from high school, there wasn't enough money. Dad was sick and couldn't work. Mom needed to stay home with baby Sue.

So I went to work at a fast-food place.

But now that I have a steady job in an office, I'm saving my money. Maybe this summer I can take a college class at last.

A great majority of our nine million college students are not in school because they want to be or because they want to learn. They are there because it has become the thing to do or because college is a pleasant place to be; because it´s the only way they can get parents or taxpayers to support them without working at a job they don´t like; because Mother wanted them to go, or some other reason entirely irrelevant to the course of studies for which college is supposedly organized. As I crisscross the United States, I am dismayed to find that professors and administrators, when pressed for a candid opinion, estimate that no more than 25 percent of their students are turned on by classwork. For the rest, college is at best a social center or aging vat, and at worst a young folk´s home or even a prison that keeps them out of the mainstream of economic life for a few more years.
What do YOU think?

i found a direction there, but when i followed it, it just brought me back to school for another the degree in a completely unrelated field. and i'm still here, and haven't followed the tangent vector yet, i'm still waiting to finish the first degree, but i meet new people and make friends and find myself, usually on the floor feeling very sorry for myself. i develop a sense of irony and become very postmodern. i think it's cool to make fun of people who think they're cool, when they really aren't, and i let myself think that i'm counterculture. if i were really counterculture, i think i would've caught on by now.

if students want to justify the fact that they have periods of time without tangible duties to perform – which they should have and they should justify – they could do a lot better than uncritically playing junior consumers.

College is the magical place where in four years, you turn into your parents.