Well folks. Its been a while since I’ve last posted and by golly! I’ve been busy. Doing what? You might ask. Let me wax a little personal for a moment.

For the last seven (count ‘em SEVEN) years I’ve been a student at an institute of high learning. My educational career came to a close Friday as I donned that terrible cap and barge-looking gown and took the long walk across the stage. As I sat there listening to the platitudes of the whole ceremony, I pondered on what exactly I learned at this “think factory”. Here’s a short run down of life lessons I will take from my college days.

Don’t Bother Beating The System…It Will Always Beat You Back

There are many anomalies associated with studying at a university. One such oddity is the hoops one has to jump through to accomplish anything. When I started at school, I had the grandiose hope of making a difference, rattling a few cages and hopefully leaving my mark in the annals (yes, I said annals) of academia. But, I soon leaned that making a difference is only a nice phrase Red Cross commercials play to get you to donate blood. No matter how hard I tried to shake things up, it always came down to this: GRADE OR DIE.

It didn’t matter if I didn’t agree with a professor or had no desire to take a certain required class. It sickened me to see classmate after classmate sacrificing life and limb for The A. I cared about my grades about as much as I cared about what I was studying. If the subject was relevant to my life, then achieve I did. If, as in the example of my last semester as a college student, it was some inane general class, then up yours academia! But in the end I only stabbed myself in the foot because, due to my inate desire to learn something as opposed to regurgitate useless factoids, it took me an extra year to graduate. Woo hoo.

Don’t Kid Yourself With Lofty Ideals: A University is a Business Like Any Other

I realized, late into my academic career, that I was being had. Now, the school I attended is cheaper than most-I’ll give it that-but its a business. Universtiy are out to get $$$. Its not necessarily a bad thing. The football team needs new uniforms? Up the tuition. The business school’s dean needs a new boat? Raise fees for registration.

And the biggest cash cow??? PARKING. Yep. Nobody cares where you park. Really. What they admin cares about is that you park illegally so you end up having to pay for it. I actually saw on numerous occasions parking nazis wait for a person to park illegally and leave so they could run over and write a ticket. No bother just telling the person to move. Nope. $$$

Anyway, this was definetly a rant. At least I memorized my social security number at college. That was a bonus. And I’m sure in ten years or so I’ll stop swearing politely at the alumni people when they call for the last bit of my money. Armed now with my extremly lucrative Humanities degree I’m ready to head out there and face the world.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.