As with most of these posts, this was sparked by a conversation that I had in passing. This conversation began as the typical conversation whenever you speak with someone who has children in the high school age range. “We’re looking at these colleges, but he doesn’t really know what he wants to do.”
These kind of statements are always baffling to me. An educated man is saying this. He’s not stupid, but smart people do dumb things. How did he arrive at the conclusion that sending a kid to college, with no idea what he wants to do, is a reasonable idea? Operative social conventions. Society need to rethink a few things. The “college is required for success” meme needs to go.
College is great if:
1) you can get out without debt
2) you know with some certainty what you want to do (stemming from enough experience to actually make that call).
3) you are mature and driven enough to treat college with the appropriate respect. (it’s not difficult to maintain a high GPA and do well).
Without these, some more life experience may be pertinent to justify the resources, time & money, that college requires.
Trying enough different things is the way. Go out to the land in which you are a stranger. It doesn’t take that much time to know that you’re not interested in working fast food, for instance. Junior colleges, trade schools, & apprenticeships are good places to gain knowledge of that which interests you and that which doesn’t. Interests reach out and possess you, they chose you as much as you chose them. Combine that in some fashion which will allow you to be driven in a field with reasonable pay and a fair job market, then you’re off to a good start.
During my time at university, I watched many struggle and search for direction. The common experience was to pick one thing, let’s say engineering. Once they get a ways through the program of said pick, they realize that they don’t want to do engineering because it’s not enjoyable to them. Then it’s back to square one, “I don’t know what I want to do, but I know that I don’t want to do THIS.” – No Bueno. At this point, there is so much invested in the program (time, money, resources) that they feel like they have to finish. The feeling is akin to something that might be described as “no way out.”
Another common architype is the one who doesn’t know what they want to do and doesn’t approach university with the appropriate respect and maturity. It’s easy to do what’s fun and exciting, so naturally there’s a decent amount of partying, poor grades, poor decisions, and many times incomplete degrees. If only that time and money might have been better spent. It’s a sad story when people realize that they years when they feel and run best (biologically) were spent on fruitless endeavors lacking direction.
The proper environment of the aimless would be one that allows trials in many fields. Trails that peak interests and trials that do not. Through these trials, many develop direction. Go out, get a job & work. Do the absolute best job that you can do about that job. Take a few different classes at the local community college. Take trade class or two. Search online, YouTube etc.. Find people that work in positions that the path you’re considering would land you a job in and see what they have to say. The experience of people that work in fields often do no match the ideas that surround the degree or college program required for that position. Try and learn enough and you will find something.
I would always ask people claiming to desire to be an engineer: “What does an engineer do?” “What position to you desire exactly?” “What do you need to get that specific job?” (as we know, most of the better jobs require a little more that just a degree. Most are entirely unable to answer these beyond some guess.
Modern colleges are a combination of puppy mills and centers for indoctrination, depending on where you fall. They’ll crank out as many degrees as they can sell with no real concern for quality of education. It does not appear to me that many people in college should actual be there, as they do not approach what should be respectable with the appropriate respect. Frustrated teachers do what they can, and the whole system doesn’t work very well. The debt bubble continues to grow exponentially as the cost of attendance does the same. What a lovely monster we, society, have created. It’s really quite spectacular when you compare what college really is currently to what college is in it’s more idyllic beginnings. Send your aimless kids to the be destroyed by our spectacular monster.