Squiddiddler Loc: Phoenix

This has so much common sense! There are those who should go to college and those who should follow this advice!

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Editorial by Jim Mullen (author of "It takes a Village I***t")


Congratulations, graduates! One day, you’ll look back on the past six years and say, ”Those college days were the happiest of my life.”

Honestly, I’m guessing you’ll say that just a couple of days after you leave here and move back into your parents’ house. And every day afterward.

Many of you now will be entering the job market for the first time, and there are a few things you need to know. First, all the students who graduated from this school last year, and the year before, and the year before, already have taken all the good jobs. And older people like me still have jobs. And guess what? We’re not going to retire just because you graduated from college. So, good luck there.

Second, if you do get lucky and find a job that doesn’t require wearing a name tag or a dosimeter, you will be shocked to learn that most businesses will want you to be there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., not noon to 3 p.m. Don’t look at your parents and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s a reason colleges hold these commencement ceremonies at 1 in the afternoon. They know if they held them at 9 a.m., most of you still would be in the sack.

And, unlike “the college experience,” employers won’t give you a month off for Easter, another month off for Christmas and four months off for the summer. Your first year of working, you’ll get a week off and a couple of sick days – and that’s if you work for a good company.

It kind of makes you start thinking about grad school, doesn’t it?

You’re not going to believe this, but most employers care way less about sports than colleges do. Most of your big employers – the Microsofts and the Googles and the Amazons of this world – don’t really care if you played football or basketball. They don’t have cheerleaders. It’s almost as if they care more about how smart you are, how much you know and how fast you can learn new things than about your college team. Go figure.

For most of you, today is the beginning (that’s what “commencement” means, by the way) of your new life. It could be the beginning of a lot of things: the beginning of your new dead-end job at a soul-crushing cube farm; the beginning of years of sleepless nights of diaper-changing; the beginning of endless, years-long fights with your spouse; the beginning of the first of many acrimonious divorces; the beginning of child-support payments and shared custody; the beginning of your drug and alcohol problems; the beginning of trying to figure out how to pay off your crushing student loan debts while still having money left over for food – or, it can be the beginning of a long, wonderful, rewarding journey with all kinds of soul-nourishing events along the way.

The main thing you should have learned is that learning never stops. You’ll learn that working grown-ups don’t have keggers every weekend. You’ll learn there’s a reason you’ll never see a video called “Middle-aged Working Women Gone Wild.” They’re tired. They’re worn out. They are overworked and underpaid. You’ll learn that the worst professor you ever had was a pussycat compared to the worst boss you ever will have.

When you leave here today and get back home, you’ll run into guys and gals from your high school class who didn’t go to college. Now they’re plumbers and electricians and car mechanics and contractors, and they’re making a fortune. While you were spending $40,000 a year to go to school, they were making $120,000 a year. They’ve already got houses and cars, and they’re taking their families on vacations. They’re flipping houses. Maybe you should ask one of them for a job. You might learn something. They’d probably be happy to hear about any houses for sale by disbanded fraternities that you know about. Ask for a finder’s fee.

And right about now, you’re learning that you should have heard this talk before you started college, instead of at graduation.

• Jim Mullen is a syndicated columnist. Email him at mullen.jim@gmail.com.

Wonttakeitanymore

Excellent points! Btw amazon pays managers around 42000 per year! Lol so they don’t give a damn about your college! Lots of people with degrees making 15.00 to start!

Smedley_buzkill

My youngest dropped out of high school, got a GED and went to a trade school. He makes more money than his older brother who did go to college.
Of course, they both make a LOT of money.

Carol Kelly

This is very good. One of my grandsons just graduated from high school and he has chosen NOT to go to college, but continue in automotive engineering. I suggested with his talent and interests, he could go to college and design cars for the future.
He’s sticking to his guns. Good for him!

Morgan

Morgan

So let me understand the thinking here of the right, first, it's about how we are being dumbed down, and in the very net breath higher education is being discouraged, interesting critical thinking there. Not everyone is cut out for college, this is true, but to dissuade people from going doesn't seem in the best interest of the country or the person.

I found the story, where it carries some t***h is quite cynical, nothing wrong with a trade school but one doesn't have to put down college to do so. I'm also wondering what degree he has to have his job. Presently for many white collar jobs, many good paying ones, you can't even apply with the bare minimum of a BA degree.

Smedley_buzkill

The complaints about college are not about learning facts, but about the political crap dispensed along with the necessary knowledge. Opinions which differ from the usually Liberal ones held by the professors are discouraged and belittled. Sometimes it can affect your grade, when pissant pettiness gets the best of the professor.

bggamers Loc: georgia

heard a speech where they said not everyone is meant for college but parents push them there because they are told their kids won't be anybody without it but he said no one is talking trade schools and those are where the jobs are. Parent need to do what they preach investigate

Morgan

That is all hearsay being passed on from whoever wants to believe it. Promoting political beliefs to students is very much frowned upon, the teachers and professors I've ever had, political issues rarely came up unless in some kind of appropriate class, though I'm not denying it doesn't happen. It did happen to me once, but in a high school journalism class, my teacher was the head of the English(language arts) dept.

Squiddiddler Loc: Phoenix

[quote=Morgan]That is all hearsay being passed on from whoever wants to believe it.

Hearsay my ass what country are you living in?

Smedley_buzkill

[quote=Squiddiddler]

Not this one. My grade was dropped ten points "at the disgression of the professor" in a history class. It seems having an opinion that differed from his bulls**t was "disruptive." Especially when he had no good answers. I suppose that Morgan, never having had an opinion that differed from what she was told to think, never had that problem.

Morgan

I have a question for both of you, do you guys actually read the entire posts? I think very well on my own, thank you, not a follower at all. Isn't it both of you who are behaving as sheep getting on the bandwagon discrediting how good and essential higher education is? I find most people who feel that way are the very people who didn't go that way and then try and say things like this for the feelings of their own shortcomings, but it's not true, everyone is essential, and getting higher levels of education is not necessary but is always a good thing. It teaches how to be opened minded enough to weigh the pros and cons and do critical thinking. But no worries, the way we're going, soon all education will be online I imagine.

Look at your attitude here, because I didn't agree with you completely you've surmised I don't think for myself, that's quite a jump. If you actually knew me you would never say that, my family literally calls me the salmon. lol We need to stay within the bounds of reason don't we? Trade schools are very good alternatives but we don't have to put down colleges in order to build them up.

Let's make ourselves productive enough in every way to not outsource any jobs to foreign countries.

Yes, some teachers/professors may do this but college students, as with the rest of us draw their own conclusions. I do understand what you're saying, it happened to me also, what needs to happen is the administration must push for teachers not to promote their own viewpoints.

Smedley_buzkill

"it happened to me also, what needs to happen is the administration must push for teachers not to promote their own viewpoints."
Good luck with that.
I went straight from high school to college and was impressed with how smart my professors were. About the middle of my sophomore year I ran out of money, dropped out, knocked around a little then enlisted in the Army. After my discharge I returned to the same school, and was astounded at how little those professors I formerly thought were so well-informed actually knew. They were mostly those who went from high school to college to graduate school and ended up with tenure, insulated by Ivory Towered walls from reality. Their reality tended to be a myopic, parochial, self -assured, Big-Frog-In-A-Little-Pond attitude that would not accept any viewpoint that deviated very much from their own.
Education is not merely memorizing facts. It is teaching people how to think for themselves. Intelligence is less how much you know, as how much you are able to learn. It is the ability to take known facts and extrapolate valid conclusions beyond those facts.

Morgan

I agree with you, for me, I enjoy learning and experiencing new things. I wish my present mind had been inside my head when I as in high school, LOL. I also believe the mind matures and with that maturity comes the desire to find many things interesting, now this isn't true for everyone, lol some people are happy just where they're at and that's ok too.

But I know exactly what your saying, as you grew your perspective changed, the same thing had happened to me, when I had returned to college with kids right out of high school and saw how some teachers treated them, at the same time I saw what a difference five or six years make in growth, wow. But your right some teachers being in that arena for so long get an inflated opinion of themselves.

Good teachers/professors who not only teach but inspire, they're worth their weight in gold.

Smedley_buzkill

My journalism professor taught me to think and question. He should've mentioned not to do so in Professor ******'s class. LOL
The unnamed professor could not help but use his bully pulpit to spread his own political viewpoints. He would belittle students who disagreed impotently, and for the older ones like me who could shoot him down, he would fuck with our grades. I was not the only one, I found out later. This chicken kacky was allowed to continue. He was such a small man, mentally. As I said, for all his Doctorate, he was nothing more than a big fish content in his little pond.