Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:03 pm
In 2 years it will have been 24 years since the poor deluded registrar of Colgate University somehow thought I was worthy of a BA in Economics. I've learned more that's applicable to the real world in those 24 years than I ever could have crammed into the 3 functioning brain cells I possessed while attending college.
My unsolicited (and worth exactly what you paid for it) advice is this: Unless you've burned to be a doctor, lawyer, scientist, vet, or some other profession/specialty that requires specific advanced degrees since you were 2, go to college, get a BA in Econ or Poli Sci or some other mainstream major, and spend your time at college building the personal networks that will be your key to job success in your future. Avoid at all costs the temptation to lock into a "future" at the tender age of 18, especially a future that does not require advanced degrees. Chances are, by the time you're 30 (hell, even 25), your carefully laid plan for the future will have been shot down by the cold truth of reality.
Excluding those who know their lives will be lived in the hard sciences, I believe that college is not about acquiring knowledge. Instead, college is all about learning how to acquire and digest knowledge, combined with a healthy dose of learning how to live with other young adults without going postal.
I remember precious little of my Economics studies beyond the guiding principle of microeconomics: Price = Marginal Cost. The people I met, the friends I made, the processes I needed to follow to produce 35 page research papers, learning how to coexist with the boorish roommate who would boff his girlfriend with me in the room? These are the lessons and experiences that truly constituted my college education.
[/old fogey]
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PS: I voted cheese
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.