Why go to college?

May 15, 2001

    I don't think very many people would go to college if they didn't think they were getting some kind of benefit out of it.  It can be a very stressful thing to have to go through, but the rewards at the end entice so many people.  So what exactly are they looking for? What are they trying to get out of their college experience?

    My guess is that most people who go to college do it for two primary reasons.

    I think there's some problems with that mentality. If you don't know what job (profession) you want after college, it's hard to prepare for it during college. I think going to college is great for making people better people, better citizens, but I don't think it's great for making them happy & successful employees in their perfect job. Maybe I'm bitter because I'm finishing my second year of college, and I still don't have a clue what I want to do when it's all done. It's pretty much a given that if your family can afford to send you off to college after high school, that's what's going to happen. But if you don't have the motivation to continue your education, it becomes an expensive, stressful, waist of time. By the way, I'm speaking from experience...

    It seems like the keys to getting through college are organization and motivation. I would guess that those are also the keys to success in the real world. (The world after college) So if you want to believe you're going to school to prepare for your future job/profession, thats an alright assumption, as long as you realize that it's not what you do so much as how you do it that counts. If your slacking off in college, just getting by, it's not going to prepare you as much as it could if your putting a lot of effort into it. With that said, I think the following are good reasons for going to college, or realistic goals from anyone's college experience:

• Expanding your horizon. Not in the pharmaceutical sense, but in that they can understand or at least have some concept of what's going on in the world around them. There's a whole lot going on that people tend to ignore so as to stay in their comfort zone.
• Self exploration. I think the better we understand ourselves, the better we can focus our efforts to attain or achieve the things we really want in life.
• Understanding others. Knowing yourself isn't enough to understand how other people's minds work. When you can understand why people are the way they are or why they react the way they do, it makes life much easier. When two people simply cannot understand where each other is coming from, agreement on anything is going to be next to impossible.
• Communication skills. Articulation is very important in the world today. People who can speak their mind, or explain their thoughts or ideas get the credit for the ideas. With good communication comes efficiency in the work place. If someone can't explain what you are supposed to do so you can understand it, your going to have a hard time doing it right. Therefor, if you can explain to others what they have to do and how to do it, that's a valuable skill.
• Curiosity. Curiosity is what drives honest learning, and that curiosity should never end. When you loose interest in the world around you, you miss all the best things life has to offer.

    I may not know what I want to do with my life, but I have some ideas. The only way I'll know for sure is to try some of my ideas out. I may have been pressured to thinking about what I want to do enough that I finally listened... But any kind of stress will do that for you.

    I guess I'm trying to say college is a good thing, if you don't go for the wrong reasons. I think I went for the wrong reasons, but I'm a better person because of my ordeal.