So, a friend of mine just posted the following to his Facebook page:
I can’t do this. When just walking onto campus fills me with a tight hatred, I don’t know how I can do another two semesters at a place that I loathe dearly. I’ve never felt like anything other than a wallet as a student, or a vague, distasteful necessity as an employee. Add on to that the ludicrous gen eds AND a surcharge for an online course (right. a surcharge so that a professor can stay at home in their PJs) to dissuade students from using it, considering you can’t even park on-campus… I honestly don’t think I can do this.
My response is as follows:
Adam, I don’t normally respond to whining like this, and frankly in doing so in this case I feel as if I am sitting on my front porch and telling the kids running around to get the hell off of my lawn, but sometimes things just have to be said:
You need a good swift kick in the ass.
You are two semesters away from getting the piece of paper that will help you (not entitle, mind you, but help you) in furthering your life in a large number of different ways. OK, we get it that there are a bunch of things that ruffle your feathers about campus… however, they also hold in their hands the means to an improvement in life, and all you have to do is spend some time here going through the motions. Yes, it sucks having to go through the stupid classes in order to get to something that is actually worthwhile, but you still have to do it.
Two semesters is child’s play in terms of doing the scut work in order to get what you are after. Heck, you even know that by doing this scut work there is a defined achievement that you will get for doing said work! Entrepreneurs who go out into the world with a new business or whatever don’t even have that kind of guarantee dangling in front of them! Going to school and getting a degree is EASY compared to other things in life, because of those defined guarantees that are there.
I know you have tried other things in life, some with success and others with failure. What I am saying is that at this point, with only two semesters to go, I feel it is a no-brainer to put up with the garbage for the quantifiable reward, particularly given the amount of work you have already put forth towards said reward which will partially be wasted if you never achieve it (obviously you don’t lose the education that you may have gleaned from the courses you have taken, but without that piece of paper in your hands the doors of the future are a hell of a lot harder to open.)
Yes, I feel that an undergraduate degree is simply a piece of a paper, and realistically just a line item on my resume. I *think* I know where my degree is actually located… it is still in the paper tube it was sent in after my graduation (that I did not bother to attend). However, that simple line-item on my resume gets that resume through barriers that the multiple items in my work history do not do, so it is worth it despite my realistically not learning very much from the classes I took. I am now thinking about doing a graduate degree, not because I feel I will learn all that much from the courses, but because the additional line-item in the education section of my resume will be able to open more doors for me.
Bottom line is this: Get off your ass, finish the degree, and then you are truly done with this place and you can spit on the front doorstep of Tigert Hall in defiance.
Feel free to delete this response as you see fit… that is your prerogative, after all.
It will be interesting to see if he responds to this.
