The problem with college is not college. It’s those who act like it’s a god. It is not, it’s a series of buildings where teens/young 20s go and can fake their way to cap & gown. I know, I’m one of them.
Near the end of my senior year of high school it seemed like everyone was asking the same thing: are you going to college? Pft! Of course I was going to college! Doesn’t everyone go to college?! What kind of life can you have if you don’t go to college?!
Some people would skip that question entirely and jump to the next logical question: where are you going to college? Then: what is your major?
5 years, 1 school transfer, 3 major changes, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt later…I figured out it was a mistake. College was not for me, and that is okay.
Contrary to what society tells its bright-eyed, bushy-tailed high school graduates, it really is okay to not be “college material”.
I day-dreamed my way through college, I doodled baby names on the sides of my notebooks constantly during class. You would think that would be a hint my calling was maybe to be a mother. I would get physically sick at the thought of graduate school (required for my final major of choice). I took decent notes, but hardly studied for exams, simply because I didn’t care. Somehow I managed to make it on the Dean’s List for several semesters. This is beginning to sound like a majority of public high schools, pushing students through for the sake of money.
Two words: GAP YEAR. Take a year (or two) to explore what you really want in life. It’s silly to think a vast majority of 17/18 year olds will know what they want to do for the next 50 years of their lives when all they’ve known is the 4-walled-one-size-fits-all-everyone-the-same-age-ask-permission-to-use-the-toilet environment for the first 13 most informative years of their lives.
College should not be the go-to for young people, it’s setting most of them up for failure. What a horrible way to start out your new life: a piece of paper for something you don’t really care about and tens of thousands in debt. Why is this still the expected norm for our young people? We should be helping them succeed, I believe a gap year(s) can really help! A year or two of volunteering, working, figuring out what they like enough to do for the next several years. Then once that is figured out, they will be older and (hopefully) more mature, therefore more likely to put more thought in their decision to school or not school. More importantly, it will be their decision which they care enough about to pursue. This shouldn’t be an excuse to free-load, party, binge play video games. None of those things will truly help in figuring life out.
I urge all high schoolers to consider breaking from the norm, most of my generation will tell you not to repeat the mistakes we did (and yes, contrary to what you think, we do know what we’re talking about).
