As we enter college application season, with many students having just submitted their applications to the University of Central Florida and Florida State University, we thought it was the perfect time to pull this story from the archives. This opinion piece explores a timeless question: Is applying to college even worth it?
By Trisha Pancio — published in The Torch, February 16, 1995
I have spent the last four years of my life feverishly preparing myself for that national test of fire, the college application process. Never once did I question the sanity of allowing my entire life, my entire self-worth to be reduced to a packet of alphabet enclosed in triple-ply petroleum ink. “Silly and frustrating as the process might seem,” I told myself, “I have to go through it.” After all, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t go to college. And that would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
Wouldn’t it?
Seeing the play Oleana last night at Florida Studio Theatre has forced me to reexamine my assumption that college is the be-all and end-all of education. In the play, the professor accuses the student (who if you also currently work as a Burns Court usher) of being a passive roleplay of the mindless struggle of a student and a professor.
The professor later accuses the student of “self-aggrandizement,” that education has become only the means to an arbitrary end. The example given is the present-day learning environment we both scribes. The show deals with sexual harassment and power issues. What professor described, however, is what I find to be true of the American educational system.
He calls it hazing. That is how he describes the higher educational process. The student goes through a long list of assigned readings which you don’t understand, and then insists that you’ve read them and then grills you with questions to prove that you haven’t read them.
This surprisingly resonant description of many classes I have taken makes me wonder if I truly have much to gain from attending and worrying to get into a good college as another series of hoops and arbitrary requirements designed by others so I feel better qualified than myself to determine what I need to learn to be a successful human being. Perhaps it would be better to simply drop out, travel, get some real experience, etc., etc.
The problem is, I’ve seen too many people go that route. They take off on grand tours, come back to work at Subway for a while and plan to write, or start a band, do something artsy and romantic and avoid college. However, they wind up right where I started: that provoking dullness and futility where professors talk about everything while hours of one’s existence slip through their fingers. I can’t win. Suppose somehow I managed to avoid the academic hazing of the college years, I will still have to return to a world that values college degrees and the SAT and has a BA in Near Eastern Literature. If you complain about it, the management will inform you that only college graduates can hold management positions. End of story.
Or let’s say that you decide you hate Subway, but you really enjoyed writing press releases for the store openings. You want to be a writer. No need for a college education to be a writer, right? So you go to the local newspaper or magazine and apply for a job as a staff writer. The first words out of the interviewer’s mouth are, “So, what’s your major?”
It never ends.
“But really,” I think, “I can work and free myself. I’ll start my own paper and never need to count on somebody else for a job.” Then you sign on the dotted line for a starter loan and they hand you a suit salesman job in this busy capitalist world you say life may no longer all the way out the door.
The four-year college degree has become a necessary evil open for jobs that used to only require creativity and a sense of style. Does the degree you obtain actually train you to be a happy and successful human being? No, only life can teach you that. Your degree will most likely just be another four-year hoop you have to jump before your real life can begin. At some point, after you can delve into the deeper meaning of your psyche and search for that inner self, or develop the perfect plot line that is representative of your lost generation. Meaningful human experiences degree will assure you the entry level position at a company that will actually teach you what you need to know about how to get published, and more importantly, how to establish a line of credit to buy that new Macintosh that practically writes the story for you.
Every week, we select one of our previous stories to republish, as a glimpse into the past. Stay tuned every single Throwback Thursday for new installments of this PVTorch.com exclusive series.
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