College -
College is practically expected of all high school graduates. Coming out of highschool, I found myself feeling extremely pressured into going. I always enjoyed engineering classes in highschool and I was decently okay with calculus. The logical option is to go into an engineering program! So that's what I tried.
Now why did I pick the school I did? It seems someone always has a reason to pick their college. It has a good program, or it's close, or it's cheap, or their parents went there, et cetera, et cetera. The only reason I chose the school I did was because, well, I took a concurrent enrollment english class for it. If you are unaware, a concurrent enrollment class is a class offered to highschoolers by colleges where they give you college credit. So with this great basis of choice, I graduated highschool and had no excitement to get started with college.
Why would you get excited over something when your whole reason for picking it was to skip an english general? I applied for the college just before the deadline, got accepted, then waited till the last minute to choose my classes. I never looked into my professors and my schedule was a nightmare.
I learned a few things from this. One thing was that my highschool calculus teacher was exceptional at teaching me. I picked up things in that class like it was nothing. I was excited to be there and I enjoyed doing the work. Going to my first day of calculus 2 in college was a punch in the gut. I didn't like the professor, he didn't teach in a way that was understandable, and I didn't connect with him.
I was completely lost within a week and sought out additional help. The tutors helped me, but I still wasn't competent in what we were learning. I had this fear of being a nuisance to the tutors. The help they offered was for free through the univerity, I shouldn't have felt bad. Still, I felt like I was wasting their time and I didn't want to ask more questions than necessary.
One of the other things I learned was that feeling like you're only going to college because you have to is a terrible way to set yourself up for success. All of my classes had an online portion. Canvas or whatever. Near the end of the semester, I just stopped going because I didn't feel like I had to be there. Almost none of them took attendance, and hey if I'm still doing the homework, who cares if I'm not there for a powerpoint lecture?
From my two semesters in college I learned one thing more than any: I am not a book learner. I will not sit down, read a textbook, and retain any of that information. This, however, is the way all of my classes went. The professor gave me a textbook, expected me to read it, and then quizzed me on it. Every now and then some of my classes had interesting assignments, but the assignments required a general understanding of the textbook. Reading a textbook for a general education class that for some reason you need to take is very, very boring.
Give me a hands on project and I'll be the best in the class. This is why I believe I loved my highschool engineering classes so much. I got to sit down and make a sumo robot, or fiddle with an electrical cirucit, or design a marble sorter. It was fun, and I got to learn as I did.
For one final observation on my hatred of colleges, please tell me why I need to pay for a general education classes in college? They're always the dumbest classes, too. Yippee I have to take english again (twice)!! I can't wait to learn about interpersonal communication!! Ooh, constellations and space!! Sure for some, they're great. For others, we just want to take classes for the things we are going to college for. Maybe I could have pushed through a couple more semesters of college if I knew the information I was being forcefully fed would be information necessary for my degree.
I haven't completely ruled out post-secondary education from my life. There's a likelyhood I will go to a college again (but there is a catch). It will probably be for a technical college. Yeah, the thing a lower-middle class white parent would never want to hear their child say. I will still always believe that employers shouldn't always choose a degree and book knowledge over real experience.
I really applaud those who can sit down and learn from a textbook. Congratulations and good luck in your studies.