By Shira Kramer, Senior Opinions Editor and Social Media Manager
I am juggling too many things.
Yesterday, one of my professors began class by ranting about how students often forget why they went to college in the first place and are too focused on getting As. The sad thing was that while she spoke, I couldn’t help but think that maybe we had different perspectives as to why people go to college. Personally, I don’t think it has much to do with learning anymore.
In my opinion, most people do not go to college to “learn more.” These days, college is used as a stepping stone to reach other goals. For example, I want to go to law school. You cannot go to law school without an undergraduate degree, and sadly, you can’t get into law school without straight As (or close to it). Therefore, wanting to learn is a cute idea and all but it’s simply not a good enough reason to motivate one to walk to class everyday.
In addition to good grades, a student nowadays needs to be well-rounded and have tons of extracurriculars. It isn’t enough to be involved in ten different clubs, but you must also be the president or on the board of most of those activities. At least that’s what I thought. Recently, I went to talk to an advisor at the Shevet Glaubach Center for Career Strategy and Professional Development. He told me that the best thing you can do for your own personal benefit is to join a club for fun. Don’t aim to be anything but a participant. Oddly, this concept had never occurred to me.
Personally, college has always felt like a means to an end that everyone goes through. I always thought that if you were smart, you went to college. However, over the last year, I’ve realized that is not true; college isn’t always the smartest decision. Some people do not need college to achieve success. A carpenter has no need for college classes and an electrician would be wasting their time sitting in a classroom learning about political science. Even a brilliant sales engineer can be successful without a college degree. There are other ways to learn that don’t involve spending thousands of dollars for four plus years.
Do not worry, this is not my resignation from Stern or anything like that. At the same time, school does bring me a lot of anxiety. For someone like me who has five more years of school left (law school included), that is a lot of stress that I am signing up for. In fact, someone very close to me recently asked me if all of this was worth it.
My answer, without a doubt, is yes.
Waking up for classes might be the bane of my existence and I might have consistent stress dreams about professors dressed as farm animals giving me bad grades, but it is all 100% worth it. Life at Stern College is worth it. Working at the YU Observer is worth it. All of these little things make up who I am and there’s nothing more worth it than that.