Graduating from college really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Walking up on stage and getting a diploma from a man who you have not had a full conversation with in four years time is not much of an accomplishment. I am sure if I paid any average Joe on the street $120,000 to stand up on stage wearing a silly robe and give me a xeroxed piece of paper with my name on it many men would stand up to the call. But I sat through the graduation speeches and heard my mom screaming from the crowd as I strolled across the stage and shook hands with some guy making more money than I will ever manage to scrape up for a degree I won't use. I know not everybody graduates from college but a lot of people in this day and age do, and it is starting to lose its prestige. Its enjoying a band before they hit it big, and then afterwards realizing their nothing too great. The Nickelback Special as I like to call it.
I am not saying I didn't learn anything in college. I became a pretty good bartender at school. And as the years went by I got better and better at slight of hand because all the girls started to ask questions like "What did you just put in my drink?" and "Why is there a large bottle of GHB next to the cherries?" And as the time passes in the real world I am starting to realize my professors were right in saying the skills I learn at college will help me in the real world. Just yesterday I was walking down the street when a crazy man wearing nothing but a trench coat brandishing a box cutter asked me; "What does The Block World Theory institute about the construction of the universe?!" Well its a good thing I attended a lecture last semester on a book written by Stephen Hawking because after 20 minutes of debating the practicality of the String Thoery with this man, he let him guard down to reiterate a point and I hit him with a trash can lid.
College has become what highschool was 25 years ago. It is the myth of what the minimal basis for being successful and has gotten easier. I graduated a few points shy of Cum Laude and never read a full book. Hell, I had a class my senior year whose final was 35 multible choice questions and no essay. At the time I was not going to complain but looking back I can get more information from an article in Rolling Stone than I can get sitting around listening to a professor for 16 hours a week. There is more useful information about global politics in an Audioslave song than there is in the classroom.
Ok, so maybe college now just is not supposed to be the intellectual boiling pot of ideas to achieve a higher understanding of a specific area of study. I think the sooner colleges accept this to be true the sooner they can start charging even more than they charge now. Think about it; when you were applying to colleges every brochure looked the same. Beautiful shots of the campus, people in labcoats pouring liquids into basins, two black guys and an Asian kid studying under a tree; its the template for every one of them. Now what if a college had the brass to put out some media on what college was really about. Pictures of eight people shoved into a Cavalier in line at the drive-thru of Taco Bell at one in the morning, pictures of the latest Whores and Smores party, a drunken note written from one roommate to another about where he went that night that just kind of trails off at the end about Yoda and Twinkees. If colleges were to take one person's Facebook photos and mail them out to prospective students their attendance would triple.
College is over. This is the new Acts of Randomness.
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I applaud the new and improved post-college Acts of Randomness.
You know, there once was a time I was in your shoes. You weren't around and I just had to try them on. So comfortable, so many Twinkies for Yoda to eat.
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