Higher Education. Extended Adolescence?

“Ambition is the last refuge of failure.”
Oscar Wilde

I’m 4 months into the real world.  College is over and student loan payments loom in the horizon.  With the stress to make money, get married and have 2.3 kids, there is the desire to make something of value come from my education and time.  Education?  I wonder what I really learned through those 4 years + 1 of tests, papers, and the drunken haze in between.  Some call college life an “extended adolescence” and I tend to agree with them.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for an educated mind but, a system that holds up a promise of a bright future for all who pay the right price is beyond my breaking point.  To quote my school’s president on his reasons for raising tuition once again by 12%, “a college degree will serve the student for the rest of his life.”  When does that start?  Because the only thing that my $40,000.00 has given me so far is a purpose identity crisis.  The tragedy is that the education we are promised is clothed in a purpose suit waiting for well intentioned, driven individuals to bite.  I worked hard on my education.  I graduated with honors in biology from the university of alabama with absolutely no marketable skills except the ticket to get into graduate school.  I find my self extremely discouraged, depressed, angry at a system that is driven by greed, and most of all hopeless.  How does one find purpose?  How does one justify losing 5 years of hard work.  I know I’m not alone.  Millions of graduates are faced with the same dilemma.  Without a sense of direction, I have been thrust into a sink or swim world and best advise they can give is “just get a job”.  To resign myself to a J-O-B just for the sake of it, is not only soul draining it’s down right wrong.  There is a longing in me for something more than mediocrity, something of value to do with my time and I hope the “real world” or people’s opinions on what I should do don’t rob me of that desire for more than “normal”. I don’t regret going to college but, I would do things differently.  I would spend more time on purpose than papers.  And diffuse the myth, at least to myself, that this time spent learning numbers and words will bring fulfillment and direction.

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