Why do we go to college? To learn about things is the answer we get when we’re younger, to find a job is the answer we get when we get older, to experience life is the answer my parents tell me, to meet my future doctor husband is the answer my best friend gives me (half-joking). As freshman year is soon ending, which is bittersweet and scary, I am trying to figure out the answer for myself. Practically, I guess for my parents’ reasons and ideally, for the reasons that I learned when I was younger. But since Spring Break, I have kind of been lagging with the effort that I had been putting into my work, as I try and figure out what the answer to that important question is, hoping that the answer was to develop close relationships with my friends that will span my whole life.
If you ask Carl, he blantantly just says that you’re paying money “just so you get to talk to other people about that shit”. I laughed when I read it, partly because he’s so blunt but partly because it’s exactly true. I do my readings so that I can talk in class and prove that I did the readings, which hopefully makes me a better and more intellectual and developed person in the process, but I don’t know if it works like that. I know that I do these readings for the mandatory history class only for the fact that I have to write a paper every so often. And we learned in psychology that information only is retained if it develops some long-term importance, that when you cram for a test, you are not memorizing for meaning, but rather for semantic recognition, and this is how I usually do best. So am I really learning anything, or am I just paying to “talk to other people about that shit “ that I read about?
I think I am learning, but to what extent, I’m not sure. I know I have learned a lot more about myself than anything about history or calculus, which is probably more important anyway in the long run. Because I don’t know how often I will need to know how to take a derivative, but I’m guessing that I’ll need to know how I think and react and function in the real world, eventually. But for now, I think it’s okay that I do my work and concentrate on enjoying my friends as well, as I’m still a naïve dumb freshman, right?
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