The History of Dialogue: Other People's Papers

I find this interesting but also super-depressing. Why oh WHY do we live in a society where people who aren’t capable of college-level work have to get college degrees so they can get jobs that you shouldn’t have had to go to college to get? People are smart in all kinds of different ways; academics isn’t indicative of everything. People who aren’t interested in learning, who aren’t interested in developing the academic discipline necessary to make themselves do those boring assignments, people who might be more interested in broadening their knowledge of the world through going out there and living in it instead of through absorbing it through readings and lectures and the process of composing papers—they shouldn’t feel like they need to go to college to be considered legitimate job candidates.

Of course, I say this as someone who has loved her experiences with higher education. I say this as someone who has loved reading and writing and learning. Even when I’m up at 4am finishing a paper and grumbling about how tedious it is—even then, I get this rush. There’s always that couple paragraphs where the words are coming out of me almost faster than I can think them, and then I get to the end of my thought and lean back in my chair and think to myself: “Damn, I know this shit. And I am articulate.”

But, at the school I’m at now (which is admittedly much less academically strenuous than the one I went to for undergrad), I work in the Writing Center advising students who rarely engage with classwork in the way I’m accustomed to. Probably three-quarters of my consultations are with students who rarely, if ever, have that “damn I know this shit” feeling while they’re writing—a feeling I get every two or three pages as I write my papers. If I didn’t get that feeling, I don’t know that I’d be able to be invested in academic work the way that I am. If I didn’t get that feeling, I don’t think I’d want to spend money going to college at all. And there are a lot of people in America who don’t get that feeling who are going to college anyway—and that renders the college experience basically useless for them. It’s just extra stress in their lives and in the lives of their professors (who typically genuinely want to help these students learn—but no one can do the work for them, and it’s frustrating for everyone when they aren’t capable of the work).

I hope none of this makes me seem like an asshole. I think education is a wonderful thing. But this isn’t about education, really. This is about a degree. And people who aren’t capable of college-level work are in college, not because they want to learn, not because they actually want to be educated, but because they want a piece of paper that says they are educated. Because they feel like they need that piece of paper to function in society. It isn’t about education anymore at all, and people who aren’t capable of college-level work are graduating from college and maybe my distaste at that makes me a snob but jesus, what are we all doing here?