June 9, 2004
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First of all, to everyone new to my site, “Hey, what’s up, welcome, thanks for making it.” I’m glad that word is somehow spreading, and people are somehow finding their way here. This is grassroots at its finest, i’m not even sure what that means, but this site has grown since my first post in November, and there seems to be a little momentum, and that’s all i can ask for.
I had a long talk w/ a friend of mine from college at Wash U., and we both kind of felt that we didn’t quite fulfill what we thought we might have. We both said we noticed all these connections between classes, and had so many thoughts in our heads, but somehow, they never materialized to anything. For those of you not yet in the working world, you’ll soon see how after college, it will be very difficult to see what might have come of your curiousities, your imagination, your questions about things.
TOPIC: If you could have one year of college, with all the students, professors, campus, environment of college, etc., but none of the college responsibility (no grades, tests, no external pressure at all), what would you do with it? What experiences would you seek, and what would you want to learn?
I would take one semester to road trip around America, visit the whole place, and get some of my own perspectives on the country. Then, I’d spend a semester in disussion about some of the things I saw, and things I heard. I’d want to learn a bit about forming organizations, and different strategies for growing organizations. I’d want to see if there were any common problems people spoke about, and to in some way dissect what those problems really were. Were they problems of perspective, meaning, people complaining about money, when they might not be aware of people poorer than themselves? Were they self-inflicted problems? And most importantly, were they problems that could be fixed, and wouldn’t require political action, but a little energy and innovation from a handful of individuals?
TOPIC#2: Many financial advertisements today imply the need to make money in order to be able to afford to send your kids to college. These advertisements say you need money to buy a house. They say you need a lot of money for your retirement. While I don’t think we shouldn’t think about the importance of money for our future, might we question the assumptions underlying these advertisements. If we decide to only send our colleges to state schools, are we suddenly less worried about money? If we decide that owning a house big enough for 20, but housing only our family of 4, is not in our future, are we suddenly less worried about money? There is a problem of people pursuing and not pursuing certain types of jobs because of money. Why teach, when you can trade stock? Why do Peace Corps, when you can be an accountant? Can we really not afford to do the jobs we want, or are some people simply inefficient with how they choose to spend their money? Some schools are recognizing the influence college debt is having on the jobs students take. Does anyone have any info or thoughts on how pursuing a college education may indirectly be causing people to sacrafice lifelong dreams by pushing people’s hands into jobs they might not have taken were it not for college debt?
Comments (4)
your site keeps challenging me, thanks.
Hello from the Tampa Bay area, home of the Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning! I just found your site today by way of Lettersat3am. I like the premise of what you are doing here. I am a 16-year home-educating mom (educating my kids, of course, not my home) with two high school graduates so far and three to go.
I will be interested to read your thoughts on the subject of education, and would be glad to share input if you are interested in my thoughts. Our oldest son is a manager at the largest science museum in the southeast US. Our second son is working fulltime in media/communications and is getting ready to start college at USF. Pleased to meet you!
If I had a year of college free of any real classes, I’d read like crazy, as many of the classics of fiction and thought that I could–and I’d want a semester’s worth of my education forwarded to a travel account for the summer, so I could visit a couple of places in the world without feeling poorer for it; not so I could talk about it later, necessarily. I think something like that might take years to digest, mentally. I’d want it rather to expand my mind, show me some things I’d never seen before, ways of living that I didn’t know. Broaden my horizons, like a tourist-eating travel center, but less ambitious in wanting to see every so-called “monument” to mankind there is.
I already know what I think of mankind; I want to find out more about people.
And as to money… I know I’ll be poor with the life I’ve chosen. That doesn’t bother me so much, as long as I can live happily. I don’t want a big house, after all–I’d rather live in an apartment, and have someone else fix my plumbing problems.
Well I haven’t experienced college yet but I think I would want to have classes that I actually want to take. I would take mostly art and social science classes (to learn about our corrupted society). There would be no homework, just discussion. I would then go around the country (like you) and photograph “happiness”. I have always wanted to go places and just take pictures of everything. I want to tell the world that it doesn’t take much to be happy. It doesn’t take money or a big house or anything like that. I’ve always wanted to do something like that
I think the problem with today’s society is that money controls everything: what we eat, what we wear, where we live, how we act, whether or not we are happy, etc. I know that I can’t say we should just do away with money because that would just be chaos, but I do think that money should not control who we are and who we want to be. Teachers are the most important things in our society; they help young people get their feet on the ground and open their minds to think about other things. The fact that people are not becoming teachers because they wouldn’t be able to afford it is truly sad. I have a very good friend who wants to be an elementary school teacher and a family friend of hers advised her not to because it didn’t pay well. I think she will become a teacher anyway (perhaps because money will never be an issue with her) but I think it’s horrible that people try to push young people away from their dream. Our society, our religion, is money. It controls our thoughts, our actions, our happiness, our stress, our decision to create a family, our decision to use birth control, etc. I think pursuing a college education could go both ways: it could either make a person more aware about the money-controlled world they live in and force them into jobs that pay well or could make them aware of the corruption that exists and invoke a voice of change within them. I guess it all depends on the person and whether or not they want to change what they see or go with the flow and become just another face in the crowd.