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[odysseus]

Does anyone else here think that college doesn't at all help one
prepare for the "real world"?

I'm one year out of college, I'm umemployed.. I have no real sense of
purpose. There is a disconnect between education/intelligence and being
able to work successfully and have a career. Trust me on this one.

My college career center can't really help me. I spent about 80k on my
education. Fortunately I am not in debt. Very fortunate. I didn't have
to take out a loan. But that doesn't mean it's all easy breezy.

The teachers taught me. The professors professed. All the lectures I
attended, all the papers and essays I turned in. Damn, it must have
been about 100 or more, during my four years. I DO believe I was highly
educated, but so what?! Education is just an abstraction. It doesn't
help you learn how to do things like pay for health insurance, invest
in real estate, have succesful relationships or lead a life of
adventure.

All the late night cramming. I did that probably four or five times.
But just as bad is the actual studying day to day throughout the whole
semester so I wouldn't have to cram. Is there any use to this?

What is the use of college? I didn't find my purpose. I didn't find my
calling. Do not be as carefree as I was. That is a warning to everyone.

I know some people during college times were more focused, committed,
thoughtful about what they were doing and why. Perhaps I was just a bit
too arrogant, a bit too carefree.

I took the last year off to go teach english in japan, though I have no
training in being a teacher, and I quit after a while and went to
thailand just to have a better life. My friends and classmates are well
into the first years of their careers. They are now able to purchase
homes, make payments on their mortgages, and finally start building
equity in their very own property, while I have to live in suburbia
under the tenancy of a landlady who sometimes drives me crazy. It is
perhaps the price I paid.

the truth about college is this. Don't expect it to change anything
that isn't already there. Education can all too often give one a
superiority complex, while people of street smarts or business sense
are already out making good salaries and taking in high incomes. Don't
be a college drifter. If you do then be prepared to flop around your
first couple years after college not knowing what the fuck you should
do now. Take the initiative immediately to figure things out= and I
know it's hard when there are tests and exams coming up that you have
to study for, and there are important parties and sporting events to go
to. But it's your life as they say. So that means do what thou will.

The value of a degree is extremely overranted in my opinion. What does
it get you? A matrix type job workig for a mega corporation as someone
else's employee, as someone else's business leverage. You'll wind up
sweating it hard to make someone else rich and free and they will be
the ones taking the credit and getting the dates.

I can do without that. I can live somewhere that my manhood isn't under
assault. I have something to give. But I can't fake it. I can't work in
a field that isn't intellectually and ideologically and physically and
idiosyncratically me. I can if I try real hard maybe manage to work in
some corporate bureaucracy of specialization. For a job like this a
degree is almost required. And that's the chief type of job you will
get with a degree, too, btw. That's what you'll get with a degree in
economics. If you get a degree in science or medicine, biology or what
have you, you can expect to go on and on for many more years of
schooling and education expense. Or law. And when you graduate from
your graduate school, you can expect to start at the bottom all over
again and work like a slave. I would rather work smart than hard, have
other people working for me because I took personal initiative and
delayed gratification and invested time, energy and money that I may
create my own job description, my own career description, my own work
lifestyle. But it's not easy. There always seems a price to pay. There
is alwasy someone who will make sure you don't get away with having too
much confidence in yourself.

College just churns out conditioned robots, and they call that
conditioned imprinting, they call that mental programming, they call
all that "learning".

Actually it starts much farther back, in high school. In grade scool.
In grammar school, even.

trust me, I'm a master of psychology. Our human species was not meant
to learn fixed answers to made up problems on pieces of paper. We were
meant to be in fields, in nature, in action and activity, not in
classrooms, where I don't find the least bit of class, btw. I would
rather be the personwho learns on his feet, and learns by doing. Every
day I count my blessings that I don't have to be in any classroom
setting. I also count my blessings that I don't have to read any more
books unless I want to. I don't have to read any more philosophy, any
more epistemology, any more psychology, or even anymore
neuro-linguistic programming.

I can read if I want, I can read like oscar wilde and edgar allan poe
or I can read james joyce and mario puzo, to learn how the world really
is. But I don't have to. I don't need books to tell me how absurd the
world really is, and how cold the world really is that it really cares
nothing for your soul, which should always be your pilot, if you're
kept in wonder.

Ultimately the trappings of success will set you free. upon graduation
you'll learn how much you'll have to pay for all that you used to get
for free. You'll have to pay for everything there is to pay for. See
that man in the suit over there. Pay him. With the nice neck tie. Pay
him.

You'll find out how kafka-esque is every bureaucracy and how much other
people want to create rules that you must abide by... OR ELSE.

College is an industry. Education is an industry. It's product is a
conditioned male or female, with a little (or a lot) less money in
one's pocket. That is just the true way of the world. That is how it
is.

Immediately upon graduation of college, which verily put much in your
head, you, in addition to finding employment, a job that pays, a career
of meaning or a vocation of importance, you should begin the process of
undoing all that you have learned. That is the only path to real
freedom, because if you keep all that you have learned and done inside
of you, it can only make you paralized. end of lesson 1