Bryan’s Ramblings

I started school when I was about three years old. It was “pre”-school, but it was school. From the early age of 3 to the ripe old age of (almost) 22 I was in school and school was my life; it was all that I knew. My life went from grade to grade, semester to semester, quarter to quarter, summer to summer for 86% of my natural born life, which basically translates to 100% of the life that I can remember. When I finally reached the end of the line I was in 16th grade, my senior year of college, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I finally graduated and entered the working world, started to encorporate into Corporate America, and began my new school-less life. I was out of school for just under two years before…

I went back. I decided I would go for my Master’s Degree because my company would pay for it, so why not? Besides, I missed school. It was always a piece of cake for me anyway. Why wouldn’t it be? I’d been doing it for my entire life. Plus, when compared to the daily grind of a full-time job, going back to school sounded almost refreshing, and for the most part, it has been. It is completely true that school is a joke when compared to my job. However, that’s exactly the problem: school is a joke.

When school is your whole life, it is so easy to see its importance. School’s purpose is preparation. First grade prepares you for second grade; sixth grade prepares you for junior high; high school prepares you for college. What does college prepare you for? Yep, you guessed it: nothing! It’s supposed to prepare you for “life”, but it so drastically misses the mark on that one that parents have to continually cop out behind the “but it expands your mind” excuse in order to justify why kids should go to college. Don’t get me wrong, though. Everybody should go to college. The experience alone is a priceless one. However, school in general and college in particular is pretty much a complete waste of time. Essentially it is a forced social life with some semblance of an “education” mixed in that is designed to help bide your time while you wait to become an adult. By the way, I’m totally fine with this. It’s a societal necessity and I think it makes good sense.

What I’m questioning now is: what can an adult who has already gone through this academic assimilation and absurdity possibly expect to gain by going back? Other than a “graduate” degree (and hopefully a raise at work), I don’t know that I’ve figured that out yet. It’s tough for me too. I mean, I didn’t really go back just to get the degree. I really wanted to learn new stuff and try to apply it at my job. The problem is, there isn’t much new stuff, and the few things that are new, I’m totally unmotivated about learning because I’m too busy worrying about work and all the other stuff that real life brings; that’s all the stuff that being in school was able to shelter me from. On top of that, because school was always easy for me and because I haven’t been out of it for that long, I’m so accustomed to the ease and the format of a school environment that I don’t feel that I need to try that hard to do well. Then, when I don’t do well, I get upset. That in and of itself upsets me too. I shouldn’t care about an A or a B. That stuff is trivial when compared to deadlines and expectations at work. So ultimately it sends me into a downward spiral for no good reason.

Being in graduate classes where students often know more than professors and a working world where employees almost always know more than their managers, what do you really expect? It’s an upside-down design, but that’s how it is. I’m sure I will eventually understand better the importance of “higher education”, but for the time being I think I’m just going to have to keep going through the motions, hoping to gain something out of the trivial tasks that come with it…for now.