Education Eudcation etc
So #1 step-daughter is off to university this weekend following in the footsteps of both myself and the wife to engage in what we lovingly refer to as Pointless Behaviour.
Not that I am opposed to the arts per se, but their practical applications in the great wide world are somewhat limited on the face of it.
From my graduating class back in 94 I know of only 1 person who is even remotely engaged in something relating to the course directly (he’s an indie film-maker of little repute) with 80% of the rest being drama teachers, a fair few ending up in white collar gigs of some kind and myself swanning about in a computer games company.
Not exactly what an honours degree in Creative Arts is intended to lead towards, I’m fairly certain.
With this in mind, do I then subscribe to the thoughts of this blog? Which effectively disputes any value of a college education whatsoever. In an even more heroic stance he’s written it for his college newspaper (he’s American, they have things like that there). To quote : “College is a waste of time, money, and lots of sperm” and “The issue containing the article hits newsstands around 11 a.m. I fully expect to be expelled by noon“.
What we have here is what is commonly known as a fucking student, and an attention whore. You’ve written an article you expect will get you expelled. You’re my hero. Check this, when I ran for student union president half of my manifesto was blacked out with marker pen due to some colourful language employed, and I included the line “Sometimes I wonder if this voyage into academia is worth all the hassle” much to the plaudits of other fucking students at the time. I was my own hero back then (still am).
To summarise college life (from my perspective) : you’re skint, you piss away what little money you have on booze and drugs, you sleep with anything with a pulse, you hate 90% of the braindead peons on your course, you take a cynical view about what they try to teach you, blow off a bunch of lectures that aren’t interesting and yet somehow in the parts you’re good at manage to get a degree at the end of it. Following which you go on the dole for a couple of years while pretending to be a rock star.
But somewhere along the lines here you picked up something important (no, not an STD) – you worked out how to think for yourself. The course itself teaches you a bit about its subject matter but that’s kinda irrelevant. The important part is the identity it gives you. And I don’t mean this in a psychiatric sense of self babble fashion; when you work out that it’s actually all bullshit but you’re kind of good at some of it and that the people you despise (for a creative course many most of them had zero creative ability) are justifiably worthless, and that your own ideas are just as good as any dead 1960′s French guy (I used this to justify not providing any supporting theories once, didn’t work) then you’re actually braced to head out into the world with the right outlook.
College is a waste of time and money but it does reward you with something valuable if you do it right – the ability to think. However, if you reckon it’ll get you a job, you’re wrong.
So in response to the angry young man who’s trying to get thrown out, just quit it’s less obviously attention-whoring and looks better on your CV. Your “damning critique” makes you sound like a whiney little 21 year old who thinks the world owes him a living. It doesn’t. You sound like every other whiney little 21 year old who thinks they’re a superhero.
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