What I Learned In College
What I Learned In College
I’m feeling purple today. It happens once a year. I walk out to take my daughter to school or jump in the car to run some errands, and I am accosted by a sea of purple. It is graduation time, and Northwestern students don purple gowns and walk through my neighborhood to the stadium to take part in this time honored tradition. I get nostalgic. Every time. Because what I learned in college will never boil down to dollars and cents.
They were some of the best years in my life. I know the battle rages on about whether college is worth it or not. I certainly cannot say. The amount we are expected to fork out seems unsustainable.
But it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Humility
What I learned in college continues to resonate today. I learned humility. Although I was a top student, there were many who learned better and were more agile than me. They studied harder. Caught on faster. And generally did better.
For some, they even did so with less effort. There is nothing more humbling to an achiever than to see others waltz through when you are mired in the mud. Or conversely to find those who are willing to give more than you. They are willing to stay up later, memorize volumes, and push farther.
College put me in my place. By the time I left, my eyes were open to my own abilities and limits.
Self Dependence
What I learned in college was how to be an adult. Although I had taken on many tasks at home throughout high school, there was always a backstop. My parents were often there to back me up if I didn’t know what to do.
This spanned simple household chores like cooking, to much more complex concepts like how to navigate living with a roommate you don’t like. Many life skills only took hold once I was left on my own to struggle and fall on my face.
I might have made many mistakes, but I came out on the other side much more competent and capable of adulting.
Did I need an expensive college experience to learn these skills? possibly not. But it did provide the right environment to teach me how to advocate for myself both personally and academically (professionally).
Confidence
And last and most important of all, what I learned in college was confidence. I learned to walk into an academic or business setting and grab what I needed from it. It was a time to manage both personal and professional needs, and build new skills.
Away from my parents, I was free to sink or swim on my own. The classroom studies pushed me to learn, adapt, and organize. The maze of administrative tasks, learning, and personal care were essential tasks before entering true adulthood.
Would I Do It Again?
Yes. I certainly would. I probably would have found a way to spend less money, and might not have been so stuck on which exact college I went to. But I would hope to gain all the great skills that I have already.
The sea of purple will come and go over the next few days. New graduates will spread their wings and take the first step into true adulthood. Will they have gotten as much out of college as I have?
Only time will tell.
Forgive me but it sounds like you didn’t learn much you wouldn’t have leaned if you had taken a factory job in another town and gotten a small apartment? It is a big difference with vocational degrees, like engineering, because you graduate with most of the technical skills you need to start earning a living. I know this is antithetical to the point you were trying to make but to this reader it appears that a four year degree is not much more than a selection filter for premed students. It’s not that it is useless but it seems very time inefficient for doctors to spend four years on a major then four more on med school. Case in point, my chemical engineer son who is now a doctor. Sure he can use some of what he gained becoming an engineer, but only a fraction.
You don’t learn enough in med school to come out as a physician and make the kinds of decisions that need making at age 22. Part of the problem with medicine is the system is designed around “learning your 10 things” If you learn your 10 things in every subject you are a star. You will pass all the board exams because you are trained that way and med students are nothing if not anal and conscientious. I think that’s what med school’s use as a criteria to enter people. You need someone willing to have the shit beat out of them and then show up the next morning at 5 a.m. ready for rounds. It is not about educational efficiency or utility. In your son’s case he uses far more of what he learned as an engineer than the surface discipline. He learned how to think, how to analyze, how to create models which will predictably represent reality which can then be applied to the natural history of diseases and used to predict and improve outcomes for patients
I disagree. Freshman year college students are not ready to study medicine. They have a lot more growing and learning to think independently necessary. College provides this.
Well said and a nice read!
This comes on the heels of our youngest graduating High School. When I think of the many critical times we were there as parents for both our daughters , to lend guidance , support, strength, commitment, to find a way to make something work out, to show them how close they were to a goal, and to try again; I know that we gave them our best foundation . And I agree with you, when you settle into college , you become self reliant, and discover what you, relationships, deadlines, and more are all about . I am excited for this next adventure, for our children, and for ourselves .
Congrats on launching two successful children. No small feat.
Thank you!! :))
I majored in Chemistry Engineering and Neuro Science across 5 years. It was an intense playground. I was involved in research in both Inorganic Chemistry and Neuro Science. In Neuro Science I did brain surgery on animals and worked on a novel approach to understanding strokes. I RECOMMEND! It was so much fun and so intensely interesting. One of my final courses was P-chem (physical chemistry) a very mathematical understanding of the reality of chemistry and therefore the universe. After the final I went to the bar for a beer. That final totally fried me as the course was a grad level course. As I looked at the glass I saw the little bubbles rise from the bottom and realized I knew the equations which determines why that happens. Completely made my college education worth it. I didn’t have a plan to go into medicine or anything and in fact got a job as an electronic engineer post college and taught electronics at a jr college and didn’t go into medicine till 5 years later. If I had been post grad bound it probably would have made the experience suck but I wasn’t post grad driven and just did what showed up on my plate. I think how you go is more important than where you go. Science is science, engineering is engineering, math is math. I was not on a treadmill, I was in a playground.
I like your way of looking at it. Often the path is just as important as the destination. Well said.