Your Rose-Colored Glasses

Hey my majessties,

So, winter break is basically over. I know a few people who have already started school. I begin this coming Monday and I am not looking forward to the onslaught of essays and exams that mean everything in college but nothing in the real world. And I feel even worse about them for those kids still in high school. When you're there, they give you these rose-colored glasses that make you feel like what you are learning will actually help you in college. Your professors teachers are still trying to make you think that their classes are like college ones. They are lying.


While there are normally less assignments, the few ones that you do have will make or break you. But so what? When you are interviewing for a job, no one is going to ask why you got a C on that one test in psychology 101 instead of a B. These things don't matter later on in life but we have been told for so long that this is how we will get a better job. 

Since we were freshman in high school, we have been told stories about college that are supposed to make us strive to be our best. The smarter you are, the better the school. But the better the school the more expensive the tuition. To many people, the name and reputation is the most important part about choosing a school. Well I am calling bull.

When you ask people today, they say that all matters is the major and the grade point average. What school you went to does not always make the difference. At the end of the day, someone in an ivy league school may still be taking the same courses as a student at a community college. While the tests may be harder, the material is the same. And employers want someone who knows the material, no matter where they learned it.

Right now, I am majoring in PR with a minor in Sociology. And if that is what I stay in, good for me. But there is no problem with switching majors. There is no problem with taking another semester in college because you decided what you wanted to do too late. Your teachers and the president of your college usually say that your goal is to graduate in four years. But most kids don't actually fit that timeline. Some have to take classes every summer.  Others can get away with not taking a full schedule. This timeline that they try to force on you is more of a warning than anything. If it takes all their students seven years to finish, it reflects badly on them as an institution. 

College is a time in our lives where we have to make important decisions without much background information. We have to choose our schools based on a thirty minute tour of the campus and the website. We have to choose majors based on the overall idea. We choose courses based on what is required. 

When you go to college, you have this great idea of what it will be like. Sometimes it may live up to those expectations and sometime it may fall short. But if you keep trying and changing things up, you should be able to have a successful college career and maybe even graduate in four years.

Rant over.
Enjoy!
Jess