College students should plan their futures, not just plan to
graduate
Bonnie Fitzpatrick / Columnist
Last week, my mom told me, “When people ask me what
you’re majoring in, Bonnie, I tell them snowboarding,
ice hockey and horseback riding.” Sadly, this is more
than accurate. Going into the last semester of college, the
most tangible examples of my “education” are ice
hockey medals from the state games, some old plane tickets to
Colorado for a snowboarding trip and some blue ribbons
hanging in my tack room at my horse stable. One semester I
studied tanning and working out while I worked and lived on
the Florida coast.
While in college, I can’t say that I took too many
classes. One semester I took eight hours, the next semesters
I took 12. I took some interesting classes, too: Dance in
Worship, Canoeing and Literature, Creative Writing and
Mediation. I even took a semester off.
When I returned to college the summer after my semester off,
my only concern was to graduate on time, regardless of how
many more hours than usual I would have to take or how many
interesting classes I would miss. I didn’t care if I
received a degree in creative writing or in general studies;
I was just going to graduate in four years, period. It turns
out it can be done, but it is a big joke.
If your only goal in college is to graduate in a certain
period of time after not taking nearly enough
“real” classes, you are most definitely not going
to graduate with enough “real” knowledge in one
given area to feel marketable in a struggling job economy.
I want to know if my whole education is only about getting
me in the door after graduation. Do we all have to have a
low-paying, boring and dispensable job for a year or two
after college to learn what we should have learned in
college, or have the professors and academic advisers lost
touch with the world outside of the academic college bubble?
In order to set my goal in the right direction, I gave all
my educational aspirations to an adviser. This adviser is
someone who is supposed to help you obtain your dreams by
directing your education in the best way possible. It seems
reasonable to ask that you have views similar to your
adviser’s so they understand your intended career path.
I had big plans that I was going to do everything differently
than the typical college graduate. My father never went to
college, yet has earned a living that put him into a higher
than average class.
From an early age, I decided I would get a college
education, but it would only be for security. My $80,000
piece of paper would show potential employers I was just as
intelligent as the next Joe Schmo. With all my activities and
hobbies, there was no way I would graduate college and get a
9-to-5 job in a cubicle when my horse is waiting and there is
fresh powder on the slopes. But how do you tell your college
adviser that all this preparation is really never going to be
of interest to you personally, but thanks for all the help
and encouragement?
I think it is time we take our lives and our future job
desires into our own hands. Why don’t we learn what we
like to do and create jobs around things we want to do,
instead of getting herded into the typical market the
professors know? Instead of sitting around hoping to make the
necessary contacts to develop a life we want to live, we
should go out and get internships outside of our majors and
not listen wholeheartedly to advisers who don’t know
what we are truly capable of beyond the classroom walls.
There is no reason to believe any one of us could not find or
create a job we will be happy with after college, because
after graduation a degree is really nothing more than an
expensive piece of paper.
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