Reality Check...(QLC Op-Ed)

[abby]

Hey, just thought you all might get something out of this op-ed that Cathy and I wrote, which the Washington Examiner ran today for grads. Enjoy!

http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/05/30/opinion/op-ed/27oped31wilnerstocker.txt

[24forever]

That is so fantastic, I wish it had been around when I graduated!

[tina1979]

Thats great!!

[heatherf]

Poor graduates........ :sad: I hope they started sending out their resumes MONTHS ago.... :rolleyes:

Then again, once they get their first job there's always that brick wall that they will quickly run into and murmur to themselves for the first few months, "I'm going to do THIS for the rest of my life?"

[biodork]

Great article!

[shimmer728]

I liked it! :)

[jrm6404]

Great article. I wish it had been around 6 years ago when I graduated! If only a college degree guaranteed success like it did in our grandpartent's and/or parent's generations!

[lilyflower]

Great article, I wish someone had told ME that when I graduated last year. And yes, Heather, I did send out my resume in January before I graduated before I finally got my first job in July. :rolleyes:

[abby]

thanks guys! i too wish i had been warned ;)

[Everly]

Great article! I wish I knew that before too. Well at least now I do!

[wastingyears]

Well that's great. See, this is the kind of thing it took me years to realize that my college hadn't told me. I swear, I think there ought to be a class for seniors called "Life 101". I never felt like I needed help with things like doing a budget or knowing that credit cards aren't free money - - that kind of stuff seemed pretty obvious. But there are all sorts of other things you just don't know. Like, if you've always been on your parents' health plan, health insurance is some abstract concept you've never really thought about. I didn't even know that it came primarily from employers, or later that it came with some jobs but not others, or how expensive it was to pay for individually. Never thought much about mortgages either, or that you couldn't just buy a nice house if you were willing to borrow however much it cost - - that your new-grad crap income meant it was the ghetto or the sticks for you, if anything. But even that kind of stuff is just the mundane kind of trivia that could've been put in a pamphlet or something.

The most important stuff that was missing was the more abstract conceptual stuff like, "loss of community - you're about to feel very alone" or "nobody is going to hand you squat because you went to a good school" or "the poorly performing students are just as likely to pass you by now as anyone" or "most of you won't be hotshots five years from now" or "you're likely to feel horrible about yourself when you don't live up to the unrealistic picture of life you're expecting" or the concept of paying ones professional dues - - that cruel irony that lands bright grads in humiliatingly menial positions for some seemingly cosmically-ordained period of time even when they could be doing so much more.

It's a crime that we turn people out of college with no life skills. Academic knowledge is great and critical thinking skills are great and necessary, but how about just one semester on what it means to make a life? A couple of weeks discussing the fact that your whole life has been laid out on a track for you up until then, but the moving sidwalk was about to end and dump you off and you'd be presented with so many choices that it would be easy to become paralyzed.

I think this site is sooo onto something. I'd love to see some kind of effort to get colleges to create life skills classes. And since most of us would be too arrogant or naive to feel like we needed to take them, they'd need to be required courses for seniors. maybe they could even be 1 credit hour courses, just meeting once per week. You could have speakers come in, recent grads could tell their stories, horror stories and success stories, different non-storybook life scenarios could be explored, etc. And people could leave with a packet of things to turn back to when real life made became apparent. Support networks could maybe be set up (if other placement offices are like mine was, they aren't much help aside from an occasional job lead. No life help there). You just get hit with such a baffling wall of new concepts that it seems crazy to go into it unarmed. There's something to be said for learning those lessons the hard way, maybe that's the only way. But a bit of prep could prevent a lot of scarring.

I spoke with an older guy at work a while back who has since retired. He had a son a bit older than me and he said things are completely different for our generation than they were for his. He said back then there were just so many fewer choices. You got out of school, you got a job down at the bank in town or the plant or the mill, and you stayed there. And you got married and that was that (unless you had to go to war). We think of more options as better, and fewer options as being stifling, but there was actually a book recently called The Paradox of Choice. The author explored the concept of the paralyzing effect too many choices can have. I'm not sure I agree with some of its points, but I think it's worth factoring its main premise into your thoughts about the seeming predicament today's grads face, especially if this really is a new kind of situation that older generations did not face.

[wordsmith]

Good call on the exploring your options. I jumped into something nontraditional and very personally fulfilling after graduation, and never had to spend a minute filing, collating, or questioning "PC Load Letter?? What the f*ck does THAT mean??"

It makes me vomit to think of the number of graduates (as well as the number of my own classmates in spring of '99) who think that their only option is cubicle hell. I thank God every day that I ended up walking the less traditional walk after college, and didn't jump into the corporate rat race and never will.