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Email ThisI love my parents. If they needed a kidney, liver, right big toenail, I’d gladly give them mine. But, all that love doesn’t change this: They are liars, liars with pants constantly on fire.
The lie they told me was not one of malice, but of ignorance. They said: “You can do anything you want so long as get a college education.”
It seems like everyone of the Boomer generation believed that a college degree would be the magic bullet forever. Heck, back in the ’50s my research shows that a diploma did get you the high-profile, money-making job as well as a nice house and a sweet car. Of course, my research methods involve watching reruns of Happy Days, but I do feel that to be the most accurate of all known methodologies.
The funny thing is, I never caught on to this little untruth, even as other myths of my childhood fell by the wayside. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were resigned to the fiction pile, and I even learned the harder lessons that life isn’t eternal and the good guys don’t always win. (That last lesson I actually learned from professional wrestling.)
Even though I learned so much I still clung to the belief that with good grades and a college degree I’d be made in the shade. I don’t know why I never caught on, it’s not like the signs weren’t there.
Obviously I wouldn’t be a doctor or a lawyer unless I stayed in school even longer, but I didn’t need that. I had the hazy sense of some middle management job that I’d work for 10 years before really climbing the ladder and getting into the upper echelons of a company.
C’mon people, don’t tell me the recruiters are just waiting for us young and eager grads. As if they line the walk out of the auditorium, handing out business cards and pleading for us to call them sometime. I’m sure that twentysomethings with no real full-time job experience and no proven work track record are exactly what they’re looking for. Right?
As if my naïve ways weren’t bad enough, I also assumed it didn’t matter what you majored in. I drew this assumption based on the advice of professionals who said it wasn’t about the course of study, it was about proving you could do the work and excel in the environment. Whoever these people are should have their credentials revoked, because I had to learn the hard way the only guaranteed work right out of college comes for accountants and engineers, history majors need not apply.
After graduation, seeing that I had no jobs lined up, I moved back home and continued the search. The first few months were met with frustration, but I tried to keep my chin up. Eventually I paid a visit to the dean of my university, who had been a good friend and mentor to me the entire time I was there. After spilling my every frustration to him he looked at me and simply said, “Brad, if you had come to me four years ago and asked me if you could get a job with a history and political science degree I would have said no, it’s just not marketable.”
I was crushed.
The lie had won. It carried me all the way through graduation, making me believe I could really “be whatever I wanted to be” while it sat in the corner snickering and I never once even bothered to ask what was so funny.
Now I dwell in cube purgatory, waiting to be cleansed of the sin of believing in something so false for so long. Hopefully it’s not a 1:1 ratio for time served, otherwise I’ll be in this box for 20 more years. I may yet make it to where I want to be, but it’s going to be due to working hard at what I love, and not to a mystical, magical piece of paper.
So if you’re in the same boat as me, staring out over a sea of doldrums wondering where it all went wrong and how you could also buy into a lie for so long then join me in this pledge. Let us promise not to commit the same lie of ignorance and tell our kids that a college degree is a golden ticket.
Instead, let’s tell them they need to go to grad school, at least that way they’ll have a masters in uselessness rather than a bachelors, and then we’ll have something to brag to our friends about.
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I agree with pretty much all o’ this.
One thing though, at least they got you into and through an education, which is still the good choice as far as experience goes. In the end it is about what YOU make of it.
Up to this point, employers have never even looked at my B.A. credentials - but they know they’re there.
It has nothing to do with your credentials and everything to do with your network. I graduated in May with a BA in English, and I have a perfectly fine, non-cubicle job that’s stimulating and interesting. It isn’t teaching, and it isn’t mindless work. Sure, if you come out with a degree in Humanities and expect the job offers to come pouring in, it just isn’t going to happen. But if you have the network to push you along, you’ll be fine.
Don’t forget, also, that college gives you more than just a degree–it gives you leadership, internship, and scholarship opportunities that are great pads for your resume.
(P.S) Watch your comma splices :).
All I could think about when reading this post was the game of Life. And I’m seriously talking about the game…the board game. I don’t know about you, but when I play Life I never choose the college route. It takes too long, I spend too much money, and I usually lose. I seem to do much better when I go the route sans college.
I think for our parents college wasn’t as accessible as it is now. Now it has evolved — no longer does having a degree guarantee us a job, it’s only the first step. We need a degree, and we need to market ourselves by networking, interning, etc.
Of course I’ll tell my kids they should go to school; I just hope that my kids understand it’s only a small slice of the success pie.
I graduated university with a B.A. in history. Three months later, I got a job working as a web developer for a government agency.
The value of getting the degree wasn’t in the marketability of the piece of paper. It was in the six years of focused learning, the side skills obtained that otherwise would have been difficult to stumble on, and above all else, the tremendous networking opportunities.
So in that sense, a university degree is well worth the time and money.
I agree with Alyssa; success is not determined by one factor. It’s determined by a great many, and a university degree is only one of them.
Great, another Gen Y blog piece that blames others for their lot in life. My advice to you is to man up and quit being a little boy. Show some spine, make a plan, do more with your time than just video games and take control of your life. If you were in the third world struggling to acquire basic necessities do you really think you would have the luxury of whining?
And your parents were not lying. My two degrees, which I earned while working full-time, were my ticket out of poverty.
While a college degree is not the ticket to making big $$$ that it may have been long ago, it is still very beneficial. It’s not like you’re going to be working hourly wage jobs at McDonalds with a college degree, so it does move you up the totem pole somewhat.
Just because it’s not a magic piece of paper that grants you instant financial success doesn’t mean that it is not beneficial to having a degree. Going to college for 4+ teaches you how to network and work well with others, not to mention it should open up doors to you and give you views of the world that you may not have seen without the college experience. So an undergraduate degree is still a very important piece of paper to have, but of course it always helps if it’s in a major that is “marketable” in some way.
I pledge too but don’t forget you can still become whatever you want to be. I think it’s a matter of innovation first and the skills you learned in college have prepared you to innovate. At least, thats the lie I tell myself.
I didn’t move away, pay THOUSANDS of dollars and go into debt to get a network going, and get “work experience” in an internship. Yes a BA or BS is still a ticket out of poverty, but this is ridiculous. I agree. Your marketability has nothing to do with your college degree. It’s a given now, that you have one. And yet it costs alot of money. ALOT of money. Maybe we wouldnt look at the prestige of the school so much if we saw this sooner. Maybe we wouldnt focus on extracurriculars, but on actual networking and jobs earlier.