on the importance of college
i want to go to a good college.
but i ask myself why. what does it matter? recognition? education? or maybe i am no better than franny and i just need that pat on the back that tells me i am smart. i hate to think that i am like that but i guess i am. i guess we all are. why else would we care? there is obviously more resepct if you tell someone you are going to, say, harvard (which is, by the way, way overrated), not rutgers. but beyond impressing your friends in high school and family, who really cares? undergraduate school does not matter. as long as you do well, you will likely be able to get into any graduate school you want. grad schools dont care where you went, they care how well you did. and even beyond that, i wonder if employers care where someone went to grad school. there are only so many people that earned their degrees from ivies or other elite schools, and i doubt that all respectable workers went to there. my dad, for example, went to upenn undergrad but stopped there to continue the highly respectable family business of silkscreening clothing, making varsity jackets, etc. out of nowhere he decided that the job sucked (duh) and he got his masters from seton hall. and now he works at ny presbyterian hospital, the university hospital of columbia and cornell. is seton hall impressive? not at all. but it didnt really matter. as long as the degree is there, no one really cares where you went.
which brings me back to where i started, contemplating if i really want to go to a prestigious school. i guess the answer is no. but at the same time i know that i will be very upset with myself if i go to rutgers, tcnj, penn state, and so forth. maybe i just want what i feel i deserve. i have worked (kind of) hard to get where i am and i hope it can take me to USC (as i have given up on stanford). but if not, as i have concluded, it doesnt exactly matter. i will still go to dental school and become the splendid prosthodontist i have always wanted to be.
unless, of course, i major in art history and curate at the met...
but i ask myself why. what does it matter? recognition? education? or maybe i am no better than franny and i just need that pat on the back that tells me i am smart. i hate to think that i am like that but i guess i am. i guess we all are. why else would we care? there is obviously more resepct if you tell someone you are going to, say, harvard (which is, by the way, way overrated), not rutgers. but beyond impressing your friends in high school and family, who really cares? undergraduate school does not matter. as long as you do well, you will likely be able to get into any graduate school you want. grad schools dont care where you went, they care how well you did. and even beyond that, i wonder if employers care where someone went to grad school. there are only so many people that earned their degrees from ivies or other elite schools, and i doubt that all respectable workers went to there. my dad, for example, went to upenn undergrad but stopped there to continue the highly respectable family business of silkscreening clothing, making varsity jackets, etc. out of nowhere he decided that the job sucked (duh) and he got his masters from seton hall. and now he works at ny presbyterian hospital, the university hospital of columbia and cornell. is seton hall impressive? not at all. but it didnt really matter. as long as the degree is there, no one really cares where you went.
which brings me back to where i started, contemplating if i really want to go to a prestigious school. i guess the answer is no. but at the same time i know that i will be very upset with myself if i go to rutgers, tcnj, penn state, and so forth. maybe i just want what i feel i deserve. i have worked (kind of) hard to get where i am and i hope it can take me to USC (as i have given up on stanford). but if not, as i have concluded, it doesnt exactly matter. i will still go to dental school and become the splendid prosthodontist i have always wanted to be.
unless, of course, i major in art history and curate at the met...
posted by dana lynn at 4:39 PM
2 Comments:
I frankly don't want to go to college. There's all this pressure on me to start achieving and work and study and get a degree in something respectable from a prestigious college so I can get a fat paycheck from a job I hate and blend into suburbia. That's why i'm considering pulling a thoreau and going to live in the woods and writing a book about it.
It's not the college, it's the connections and the opportunities at it.
You're not going to get a summit of world leaders at Rutgers, but at Columbia or Harvard, sure.
Also, you're likely not going to meet the future President at Seton Hall.
And that's about it.
Post a Comment
<< Home