I cannot begin to pinpoint from what source this idea came to me but one way or another through my childhood, and into my teens, and then into my college years I firmly believed that one went to college because that was simply as what one does after high school.
One did not attend college for training in some sort of specific vocation, one went to college as to develop one's sense of identity and expand one's mind with all those frivolous arts mankind has produced over the years. Variety and novelty was what one seeks in college, not information. Strolling through the garden the decadent blooms of humanity were to be marveled at, their lusty scents deeply inhaled and exalted.
When you leave this greenhouse you naturally do not know the first thing about cultivating such exotic flowers. How to prepare the soil, how deep to plant the seeds, how much sunlight and how much water, but this is not problem, you will not be expected to soil your primly hands with such manual labor.
Nay, you will deal only with other like experienced persons. You need only show them the ticket given you upon leaving the greenhouse and they will admit of you into their elite company. The specific path you tread through the greenhouse, what flowers you know best, is irrelevant.
This was what I believed.
The truth is that the world is an indifferent place. That you went to college on the backs of your parents means nothing to the world. That kind of attitude may have flown when the economy was flush with more money than people knew what to deal with, but when all that money evaporates into the illusion it always was that won't get you anywhere.
Oh? Did no one tell you that you were expected to do something for your room and board? That you must produce something people would be willing to pay money for? You have a very high opinion of yourself, but what have you done to merit such an opinion? Were you so indescribably arrogant as to believe that the world owed you something?
Well, here begins your education. Your real education.
Witness the chronicles of an English major in an unimpressed world.
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