College is the only time in our lives when we are free from the calendar of the adult world. I don’t know anyone who starts studying right at nine and stops immediately at five, but apparently it’s the grownup thing to do, right up there with New Year’s resolutions and wine bars.
I got too used to college, so it was weird sitting at home watching my parents make New Year’s resolutions and go about their business like it was the beginning of something new while I was merely taking a month-long break from regularly scheduled programming.
The actual calendar has been subverted by the academic calendar since before I could read. In fact, since high school started the only calendar that mattered is the one telling me where my next class is. The last day of school has always been momentous and signaled the closing of a chapter in a way the New Year never has. The start of second semester isn’t the beginning of something new; it’s the beginning of the end.
My lack of New Year cheer has me thinking a lot about the fourth-years and graduation. I luckily have another year before I leave this place forever, and even that deadline is approaching faster and faster. For them, though, this semester will be their last as undergrads, and then everything changes. Our lives change dramatically from high school to college, but they become almost unrecognizable upon graduation. No more papers on the Civil War, no more late night College Inn. No more going out on weeknights, not when there’s a desk to be filled by eight sharp.
Even more shocking is how relationships change. College as a space facilitates friendship and community. I can walk to virtually every single one of my friends’ houses. After graduation we probably won’t live within driving distance of each other. Geographic separation stings and stretches, no matter how tight we are. Relationships will fundamentally change, and not necessarily because the people have. The point is this: college does not reflect in a realistic way the majority of our society, and while this observation may be self-evident to some, it is shocking to me.
Let’s go even bigger. College is great, but what are we doing? I’m definitely not saying everyone should join the Commerce school — in fact this might be the only thing worse than our current academic schedule — but our entire higher education system is divorced from the real world. I haven’t been out there yet, so maybe it’s too early for me to say, but I’m not convinced my ticket to being a professionally and personally successful adult was punched in the classroom.
Sure, maybe it’s what happens outside the classroom which is important, and those experiences are why we are actually here. There’s an argument to be made that learning how to live on our own in a community where our parents don’t run the show is the true value of college. But I just as often hear the other side, which is all about the academics.
I don’t know about everyone else but I’m getting a little sick of reading a syllabus on the first day, checking grades after finals and wondering how this class will factor into my GPA, which has become the all-important divider of the haves and the have-nots. It’s why the minimum 3.5 GPA cutoff for [insert prestigious position] has me curious whether anyone has actually studied the link between grades and intelligence. And then it doesn’t matter what I think because the dean of admissions at the law school or the head recruiter at the consulting firm has decreed how we do at this distinctly unrealistic institution is our best indicator of real world performance. It’s like trying to navigate New York City with the Course Forum.
So yeah, it is a new year, or at least that’s what the calendar says. But, if you count kindergarten, we’re all somewhere between our 14th and 17th year in school, doing the same stuff, just with an added level of difficulty. It’s only natural it should start to bleed together a little bit.
Happy New Year everyone!
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