Lose
the money-making strategy
What do we really learn in college?
Cliched movies tell us that we learn how
to get drunk, get laid and maybe write an
occasional paper. For the most part, I think
a lot of us took care of those initiations
in high school. If not, welcome to the club.
Not a Hollywood movie, eh?
So, what is the point to all of this?
In all likelihood, there are a combination
of reasons why we are all slaving away to
learn things we will have forgotten by the
end of the year, if not the end of the week.
First, what else would most of you be doing?
It is just what you do when you get out
of high school, right?
Then there is the degree — a crisp, clean
piece of paper to prove to the world that
you have braved the wilds of academia. Fame,
fortune and an extensive personal staff
of topless servants to tend to your every
whim are in your future as long as that
degree is in your hands.
Well, maybe not. The economy is bad. Recent
graduates are having a very hard time finding
jobs that they are not overqualified for.
Which brings me to the number one reason
I think people go to college: they want
to make money. It is obvious that this is
the case. If there was no money in business
do you think anyone would take those awful
classes? Maybe if money was erased from
the equation we might start taking classes
we were really interested in, and maybe
we would really want to learn what was being
taught.
People who are returning to college, after
years of surviving “out there,” know what
is out there and they know how they fit
into the equation. We, on the other hand,
are pretty much taking a blind leap. Students
ask themselves a couple of questions when
figuring out what major to declare. “How
much money will I make,” is one of them.
To oversimplify things, there are two roads
college students can take. One, you do something
you are somewhat interested in but will
probably be bored out of your mind with
after 40 years of doing it but…you make
good money. This leaves you with money to
spend on a nice car, a nice home to come
back to after work, and two weeks’ vacation
time out of the year.
In the other scenario, you do something
meaningful and spend your whole life doing
what you want and enjoying all of your time,
not just nights and weekends.
My point is, if you branch out from your
money-making-strategy classes and take something
you think sounds interesting you may actually
learn something you want to know.
Tina Page is a journalism major at Cal
State Long Beach.
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