Do you want to complete college

[Hippopo]

It's pretty much a common fact now that unless you major in engineering or economics (something related) as an undergrad, you are going to need to go to grad school after.

And pretty much all undergrad majors (besides engineering and economics, something related) are just broad gateways into more specific graduate majors.

So major in what you truly enjoy as a undergrad. You will enjoy he coursework, and along the way hopefully you will decide on a narrower career path, then go to grad school for that.

So, uh.. Are you still in biology?

[Selkie]

So, uh.. Are you still in biology?

Yesh

[piano moths]

it's one of those things i am going to do. science

[Socks]

In an ideal world, sure. Though I honestly don't know. This might very well be my last semester. I am conflicted in conflicts of confliction. My mind and everyone else tells me to graduate. But my heart and everything else tells me it really does not matter. Technically I finish Junior year next week, credit and course wise, but actually I am almost three semesters behind. It makes no sense to stop here (32 credits short of that false 33rd degree), but college has not made much sense either. My GPA is mediocre, in generous terms, though I never cared about that. My grades are entirely F's and A's, seriously, 70/30 ish for the latter, and the late drop credits I had have been used up. More than one counselor/adviser/professor has frowned and puzzled over that fact, but the reason is quite simple, even if complex. They don't understand because their priorities determine their perspective, and we share very different desires in life and visions of the world.

I can easily bring my grades up. The material has never challenged me, it has been my own perception, and the total pointlessness of it all, which has influenced my academic record. In almost every class I have stood out, for the intensity, vastness and nature of my insight. I'm not being vain, but that is impossible not to be, when telling a great truth. I have impressed all instructors which I have studied under, sure they might thing little of my attitude and outlook, but they could never deny or silence my mind and heart. I don't care for the abstract and indirect sight which will somehow show my 'worth'--the grade. No, I care much more about the actual process of learning and knowledge, when I have that, I don't need anything more, I am satisfied. This is more difficult to attain. People seek to bypass actually learning and go right to the marks, then complain about life. The entire nature of this neo-liberal world promotes the idea that character can be quantified and measured to some standard, and that in turn promotes the idea that people don't need to develop character, so they never do. How sad.

I am not 'smart' or whatever, because I went to class and sat there for two hours and hated it and then suddenly knowldege was transmitted to me. I am what I am because I everything I do I learn from and bring that to class with me. I make the course, it does not make me. School has always  been an extension of what I already know, it has not filled me with anything new or unknown. Study does not stop when the bell rings, because experience is the mother of all thought. How curious, my fellow students waste their time away when on their own, and then come to class and magically expect to learn everything there. But they are there for the wrong reasons, for profit, not gain, for profession, not education. But no amount of courses in the world will make you the next Tesla or Shakespeare, that talent wasn't taught, it was learned. The world inspired their works, and their internal self created them. This is the difference between a circuit board and a mind. Once calculates information, the other interprets meaning. Which one are you?

I see and hear those who sit next to me, who reiterate like a machine, the basic and the methodical, as if to simply be a copier is our goal in life, and they get nearly the same grades as me. But while I agonize and fret over actualizing into form a higher standard that I hold my own, indeed the highest possible, which I conjure within me, they simply fulfill the requirements and meet the deadline. For this they are rewarded. While I am penalized because I am not satisfied with the manner in which I have expressed myself. As if an idea can care for time. What is the rush, will it not be true tomorrow, less valuable too? Sometimes I will condemn an entire semester or an A, because I have missed some classes, and no longer consider myself entitled to that mark or recognition. I have violated the spirit of the process, that cannot be ignored, and it matters a lot to me. How can I explain that in a resume? Keeping it one page, of course. These are the people that when told of something, ask how long it has to be, and I want to  strangle them when I hear that question. Down the line, when you ask them to watch you back, they'll ask you for how long. And you will know the difference then between a good man, and a good enough man. All it takes it getting to know someone to understand their entire philosophy.  

When you read their papers, which I have, and which belong in elementary school, or when you hear the speak, which I unfortunately have to, and which consist of like and like every half second, you will instantly see, they do not nearly leave the same impression as someone who takes life seriously and thoughtfully. So I think, are you kidding me? This fool will have the same degree as me, the same piece of paper, the same credentials, and yet how simple is he and she! The teachers encourage all, even the ones who needs to be addressed and redirected. This view of freedom without limits, has produced liberty without moral, and we therefore have this sense that all opinion is equal, ha, that is what has doomed us to the present mess. So yeah, as hard as it may be for you to believe, and I have questioned myself and struggled with this for years, I simply choose not to do the work sometimes, not to attend class, and don't care, though I do, because it does not define me. Can you realize how significant and bold that statement is?

The belief that I need no arbitrary council to judge me, but only the conduct of my character and the treatment I direct to all, is what matters to me. People work to death and commit suicide over poor grades because they have committed themselves to allowing activity and artificial denotions to define them. Failing to realize that only internally and only they can define and give meaning to the world and all that they there see. This is apparent and obvious to all that know, so I really do not fear having no degree, it won't make me any less and won't make you any more. You will still need to check yourself when talking to me. People are an open book, and the minute you claim something you sure as fuck have not earned, you might as well eat that paper degree, unless of course, there are only other fools before you to see. Ah, the tinsel glory of some, how blissful it must be. They don't know history, so I wonder what they think of the past? Do they even? When men were men for who they were, not for who they knew. I am sure they were stupid compared to everyone today, because they did not have a college degree. Hahahaha, oh that's too much, I think they need to drink more tea.

College, education as a whole, is not about intellectualism, or fostering a creative spirit; these two are vastly different ideologies."Higher education' is about specifying knowledge and specializing the soul, destroying imagination and instilling discipline, conforming to the system. It does not prepare one for a citizenship of decency and just moral character, but toward the uniform of the corporate world. Finance has surpassed ethics, economics has subverted observance. It has always been very difficult to sit in class, and look around me at an apathetic, desensitized, simple and frankly, stupid pupil mass who cares not about knowledge and wisdom, rather of the grade on a piece of paper, and passing time as quickly as they can. Getting a hollow degree for a hollow job is not for me. I am distraught, dismayed that they, who insult the very essence of the institution and what it represents and signifies, are considered the 'ideal students', who received 'good' marks for their mindless adherence to modern policy and complement of busy work, trivial and meaningless.

What motivation could I derive from this environment? Me, who believes dutifully and perhaps tragically in the spirit of function from form. It was difficult to see a point, yet easy to feel its pain. But I digress, I hope on this we understand each other. It is impossible to respect someone who thinks little of their independent self, like trying to teach the blind man to avoid the wall. It has always been my hope to mean much more than some title or classification, for I am chiefly me, and everything else falls below that, because of that, a part of that, but that is not me, this is who I am, the human being, the gentleman, the scholar and the jolly good fellow. I shall like to be financially well off, so i don't have to live my life slaving over the bonds of this material world, but I do not wish to rise to power on the backs of others, not to impress and wield some corrupt, inherently selfish ideology or influence, but always to lead by example, and practice what I believe, that if I am true and worth following, I am sure others will take notice and will do me good.

What is the point of driving a $100,000 benz on a crumbling street, decaying and filled with the homeless? It is something right out of Kafka, in the plaster glitzy age. Yeah, trust me, I have heard many a man, father, husband, say the key to keeping their wife happy is money, and I am struck almost dead, for I would feel death to lose someone's heart over my pocket. I am just thinking of course, nothing specific, but it seems so astonishing, this root of evil. Sure it can't buy you happiness, or respect or friendship, but it can sure as hell facilitate the potential for such things, and this is unfair, as capital does not equal merit, nor does status translate to decency. There is a reason that in all the villages I have traveled through the more remote lands, the town elders were the most respected and revered, often the wisest and the most caring, without anything but their experience as their guide. I almost want to laugh at the clientele at work, sure sir, you may have succeeded as a doctor, but you have utterly failed as a person. They may known medical terminology, but have yet to learn the words please and thank you. Bah, I could vent on an on about this modern culture, but I wont, its not the time or the place.

Yours sincerely, a college drop out.

[applesauce]

I largely agree. I suffer a similar, but lesser, plight.

As you raise in your second to last paragraph, even though the degree means nothing to you, it does mean something to a lot of people, and it might still be a good idea to stick the last bit out for practicality's sake. Realistically, how much longer would it take for you to graduate?

[Socks]

I know man, but the more it is valued the more I just want to flip my finger at it. Kind of self destructive bit whatever, wrong reasons and all of that. Anyway, to answer your questions, about a year and a half with academic probation and course availability considerations.

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

Yours sincerely, a college drop out.

Last semester I left for break so completely fucking dejected and burned out that I said the same thing. Now that I'd centered and focused on one particular major, I was ready to really get into the material, because I found it fascinating, but instead I was greeted with more by-the-textbook-fact-vomiting and memorization. No room for any real thought or anything that I couldn't get by stealing someone's textbook and dedicating a few hours to slicing my brain with the monotony. (And they're those textbooks with the fucking cartoons and the witticisms and the bolded keywords that you relay on a multiple choice scan-tron).

But then, this semester I took a comm theory class and everything is looking a little different.

The professor is a cynical brit, who is frustrated with academia. His classes are derived from his own theory which is based on case studies he worked on and from people he worked with mixed with a combination of several really striking articles by well knowns and unknowns in the field.
Class structure is lecture, and while he insists on control, there are tons of really great, critical discussions that sprout up violently, all the time.

I love it. I love the papers I've had to write for it. I love the content. I love the fact that I'm excited about learning and applying these ideas which are the absolute opposite of the regurgitated mush that I've been exposed to.
It's like dropping a fresh log in the fire. There's no cartoon-ridden textbooks. No bullshit.

This isn't something that should be a rarity, even for smaller schools. This should be commonplace. I shouldn't have to drop thousands of dollars to listen to some flub recite from a two hundred dollar textbook and then get chewed out and almost flunked because I didn't show up to half of his classes (even though I aced every one of his exams).


I understand completely where you're coming from, and it's ridiculous to accept these hideously low standards they set.

[Socks]

I understand completely where you're coming from, and it's ridiculous to accept these hideously low standards they set.

Thank you for your fight, brother of the rarest kind. It is not so much the present which troubles me, the future is what bothers me. Seems so terribly predictable and yet so entirely promising. I lack no source of wonder to mind or have need of a heart inspired, in my own life, but I have never lived simply for myself. And the current state of my fellow man weighs upon me heavily. Instances of light from shining beacons of illuminating insight never really diminish the night, just graphically demonstrate the plight of humanity, with a fleeting, bright, fire of passionate intensity. A sign of comfort to sailors stormed at sea, lost on board their vessel of hope, that voyaged for love's discovery.  It doesn't help that I must come home to a father that is as material as plastic can be and to a mother as beautiful as she is dutiful--anguish--I think, wretch, what cost your pondering does inflict! And I delay, I sabotage, I fear the gradual, perhaps inevitable claw of conformity that my professional education embodies. It just feels we're always swimming against the tide. Where topical isles of chance give but temporary relief from currents and cannot offer more than insufficient oases of life.

I love it. I love the papers I've had to write for it. I love the content. I love the fact that I'm excited about learning and applying these ideas which are the absolute opposite of the regurgitated mush that I've been exposed to.

I am uncertain of where I am ultimately going though I see the place I see constantly and know exactly where I want to be. I have seen and known many a man as your professor. His essence is my own. The perspective held there is held here too, pinched at the corners from pressures of embedded souls. This reality of dreamers, this fabric of dreams, stretches tightly across a canvas of this world. There we carve our marks, but while some write for hope, most just scribble to screw, and time passes on what could have been. A pattern of such individuals and such beliefs and such lives and such eventualities are as old as the sun and repeat endlessly in figures of eternity--divine branches of a holy tree--from the womb to the tomb. As Keats cried, 'how many Bards gild the lapses of time!'. I add, 'silently'. I am saddened of this tragedy. You know, there is a charm to righteous melancholy, fatal and deadly. But oh, how pleasantly it kills! Looking in the mirror of misery and despair, and loving the heroic, doomed fool who wisely reflects there. It is not greatly appreciated, the satisfaction of humble revolts, for fulfillment of some cosmic cause. More than a choice, a privilege, a reward, a destiny that is wholly our own.

[Hippopo]

I want to drop out so badly....  But my parents almost crapped their pants when I casually mentioned the idea... *sigh*

[burzumfan420]

if they aren't payiong it. then fuck em. 

[piano moths]

It's gotta happen. Next step!