summatus mentis

I really need to stop using song lyrics as post titles. Like, they’re fitting, but seriously, kinda cliche.

The school year has started again, and droves of new freshman are back on the $small_school campus, as well as most of the people who were here last year. Some of the freshmen probably think they know what they want to study, many probably don’t. Of those that do, a good portion will probably change their mind in their (approximately) 4 years here at $small_school. This is all ok, that’s part of what college is, right? That’s what we’re told, or at least, that’s what it felt like I was told for the 13 years I spend in the public (and quasi-private, but that’s another story) school system.

We’re told from a very young age that school is preparing us for life. In high school (or at least my high school, others might’ve been different), we were told that by the end of our four years there, we would be prepared for college, work, military, or whatever we wanted to do with our lives. I knew about halfway through high school that I wanted to study one of my current majors. People tell me I’m one of the lucky ones that knew what they wanted to “do” coming in. Now, did that mean I knew what I wanted my job to be for the rest of my life? Of course not, that would be silly.

Is it so silly to assume that I’ll know what I want to do, given that I’ve been told for a long time that I’m being “prepared for life”? Is it silly to think that after spending 13 years studying general subjects, and at least another 4 on a more specified subject area that I’ll have a goal of what I want to do with all this education? It doesn’t seem that silly. At least of the premises behind the educational system is to prepare a person for what they will do in later years. Obviously it’s better to be prepared for a field you enjoy than for a field you hate. But, at least for me, it comes down to what “prepared” means.

At the end of my four years at $small_school, will I have the skills needed to go out into the private sector into a Computer Science related job? More likely than not. Will I have the pre-requisite training to continue my education in graduate school? Very possibly. Does this mean I’m “prepared” for life? Does preparation mean “having the requisite skill-set”, or is there something deeper?

In various conversations I’ve had, I’m not the only one who isn’t sure what they want to be doing once they get out of $small_school, $medium_school, or $big_school. Clearly there are students who know what they want to do, some want to be a doctor, some want to go to grad school, some are working towards a job in journalism, and some have accepted their fate as art students who will have more difficulty finding a job in their field, but are ok with that because they love their art. But it seems as though the people who don’t know what they want to do outnumber the people who have a goal.

Is this inherently bad? No, I don’t think it is. I don’t think it’s good, but I don’t think it’s bad. Is it the job of the educational system to get students to a place where they have a starting place, and giving them the tools they need to move from there? Or is the job of the educational system strictly to give students the training to suceed in the marketplace? It seems as though $small_school takes the approach that their graduates should be fully prepared to take whatever life throws at them.

I will say, I acknowledge that this might be me turning a non-issue into an issue, because I’m trying to justify my own world spinning out of control, but I honestly think students reaching the end of their four years fit into one of three categories. 1) The students who know exactly what they want to to, 2) the students who don’t really know, but will get a job or go to grad school because it seems like the logical next step, or 3) the students who have no clue, and don’t know how to start deciding.

What’s the right answer? I don’t think there is one. Should students be pro-active in this process? Absolutely. Is this whole issue outside the domain of what the school system is striving to do? Very possibly.

Quite frankly, education and learning the content is probably the easier part of this equation.  How does one train a student to set a goal, work towards that goal, adapt should something in their plan change? How does one train a student to know what they want, or to know how to discover what they want? I’m not sure one can, but the school systems should stop professing to producing fully prepared students, or perhaps be more clear about what “prepared” means. Or maybe I should sleep more, and think less.