Bachelor of the Arts of self defense and some other ramblings about marriage and stuff
I earned my B.A. in General Psychology at the age of 21, and it has been brought to my attention a couple of times in the past that (perhaps, because, oh who knows, what are the various ways to say it---I am merely a mommy, I do not receive a paycheck, I have not yet attended grad. school, I, in mutual agreement with my life partner, have chosen a simpler lifestyle and raising our kids ourselves over more material gain., and the laughable "I don't work".....) I never used my degree.
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Well, have I "used my degree?" What does that really mean? It has provided enough food for thought to keep me awake a few nights, even when the baby was kind enough to be asleep, I was not. So here are some little snippets of what has gone through my mind on this subject lately, and like the best Questions of the Ages, it has brought on more questions, many of them unanswerable. and I think thats cool. These questions are coming from someone, who in this instance, ME, is straddling that line between parent and child, since I feel about smack dab in the middle of a college girl and a mom of a college girl, with a 9 year old daughter, having graduated college 10 years ago myself.....
Why do we go to college? Is it really to Get A Job? And how directly-correlated must that job be to make us feel like our $60,000 was worth it? What if we get a job in our "field" but don't make as much money as your average retail clerk? What if we get a high paying job and we are in misery living in a Cube-Farm feeling like a slave to The Man or The Bank, slugging pepto-bismol, etc? What if we just keep going to college forever and leave a trail of 1/2 million bucks in student loans but turn really, really smart and get to see the world and grow wierd hair and carry a backpack forever and eat and sometimes sleep in mostly coffee shops but finally get published and die penniless and incredibly famous? what if we dont do any of those things?
I know of exactly ONE degree-path that gets you a job that is both in the field and pays alot of money right off of the Bachelors Degree, and that is the accelerated 5-year program for Engineering. If you saw the kind of science these kids are doing, you'd pay them 60K yourself for the honor of being in their presence!
But when referring to the very popular Liberal Arts degree.... What gives? I think most teens, by about winter of freshman year realize that this ain't the way to get rich. So are they just putting off "Adulthood" for 4+ more years, wasting Mom and Dads' money that don't grow on trees bein' a no good drunk stoner bum? I am kidding. But is that ok? Is it ok to just learn stuff and do stuff and live and read and write and become sort of well rounded and meet people and hang out and things of this nature? Should "they" tell you that in no uncertain terms, if you get a 4 year liberal arts degree you MUST go to grad school to even think about a Job? Or is it a funtimes getaway for a bunch of unsupervised children who suddenly have this free apartment and no parents, and on someone's bill, get to do whatever they want for the first and probably last time in their lives? and is that ok? Is it the new Assumed Extended Adolescence of the modern age, and should we want this/be expected to supply this for our kids no matter what? Are we old people jealous? Jealous that we didnt go to college or couldnt go to college or blew it at college or dropped out of college or went to the wrong college or didnt stay on at graduate college, etc etc etc.........? I think this must hit home especially hard for families where this is the first person to ever go to college, the "pressure" of Givin' Your Kid What You Never Had is probably enourmous for both parent and child. And yet the job market couldnt care less about hopes dreams or pressures to "Succeed".
And if money is the only goal in life, why arent more people farming out their 14 year olds to apprenticeships in a trade? Why isnt this more of an option, and why is it considered slightly less than ideal? Is it? I don't know ANY tradesmen or women who have anywhere near the dissaffected job dissatisfaction that the cubical farm set does. So there must be something to feeling connected to your paycheck, something much more human...
So, after posing all these querstions, I will share what I do know for sure:
1) I do not know a single person, not a single one, who went from the 4-year degree directly to the related good-paying job. I know people with high paying jobs who did not go to University, and I know people who work in their field (sort of) who dont make a whole lot. I know people who got a high paying job in which a degree of some sort was part of the requirement.....but the classic that they tell you in high school.....havent seen it yet. Perhaps nowadays you need at least a Masters...
2) I love the idea of being University Educated, and I love and adore the time I spent at college and the things I learned and the times I had.
3) I hope that all of my children get to go to college if they want to, when they want to, whether that be at age 15 or 50.
4) I wish that continued education or whatever you want to call it, would be universally available, (not compulsory) just as K-12 is now....I have admitted freely that I am not very eloquent politically, but I believe that is Socialist and I am all for it, high taxes and all. (Do Not get me started about Scandinavia and the free bicycles and the paid Maternity leave and the respect they have for children and all that, it only makes me want to move there more---love it)
5) Being able to choose what you want to learn about, and having access to learning in an environment of people who all chose to be there, who are all ages and truly all backgrounds is SUPER!!! College is awesome and we need more opportunities of this sort for younger people.
So ummmm am I, do I, did I, USE MY DEGREE? Of course! And no! What does that mean?????????????
Have I used the knowledge obtained during my years at college to some monetary gain? Well, I have worked several jobs since graduating, the 2 main ones being a teacher at a small preschool, and being a fulltime in home daycare provider. I think that my degree may have impressed or swayed my employers to choose me. But is that what is meant by that question? the paper or the knowledge? 'Cuz you cant help but use knowledge....
Have I used my knowledge obtained in college in my life? To help myself? To help others? To be a better person? Oh my gosh yes. yesyesyesyesyesyes. Think about me. A Psychology degree. Uh, yeah. I use it. In my ten years of marriage, in my friendships, with my children, in my ability to understand the world around me a little or a lot, more. Psychology. And my focus of study leaned heavily towards the developmental psychology classes. As in babies and children. As in teaching. ummm yeah. If I am a dissapointment or a waste or some kind of failure in some people's eyes, all I can say is that I have eight little grey-green eyes here at home (ten if you count Steves little grey-green eyes) who feel the exact opposite, and at least I got a full 4 year scholarship to pay for the whole thing. Oh and that little thing called I am really really happy. Which is all I want for my own children. Honestly.
So the question still is out there, but not simply towards people who raise their kids with one parent home, not towards Joy, not towards anyone who went to University and didnt strick it rich, didnt go straight to corporateville at age 22, to all of us........what do we go to college for? To better ourselves? and what on EARTH does that mean? Our souls? Our friendships? Our pocketbooks?
Im happy I got my degree, and I plan on continuing to learn everyday, both in a formal institution of learning and here in my daily life. I wouldnt change a thing about the way that Steve and I have chosen to lay out the foundations of our family structure, the timing most notably.
If you want to say I went to college to get my "M.R.S." (an old super sexist joke referring to girls going to college and just getting married anyways and never getting a job) then so be it. I am not insulted because it is so untrue so I'll say I got my Many Reasons to Stayhome
; )
Whats right for us may not be right for others. It was as right for me to go to college at 17 as it was to stay home and raise my own children at 22. I do not wish to appear smug or to ever forget that behind the vast majority of homeschooling parents is a Daddy or somebody who is footing the bill. I am eternally grateful to have the kind of marriage where we can fully discuss what we want out of life well ahead of time and that we strongly agree on what it is we want for our lives and the lives of our children. I am not dissing working moms, working dads, or people who send their kids to school. I am not dissing people who have a baby and feel that it would be best that they obtain childcare elsewhere. I am not dissing people who have to work 2 or 3 or 4 jobs to make it. I dont care if you have a baby at 21 or 51, or no babies or 18 babies. I am merely defending my own self and explaining that the life I have made for myself is one that has been very carefully researched and planned for, and that is all I can say. I dont know how many parenting theory books my own mom and dad poured over together, or how many developmental theories they pondered as I grew. All I know is what I know, what Steve and I choose, and all I can do is live my life the best way I know how.
I also want to say that I feel so worried for young people nowadays, singles and couples-- who feel the enormous pressure to have the material possesions that only a generation ago noone expected you to have until your late 40's or 50's.....it seems that Gone are the days of renting a funny little flat, having one hilarious rusty car, having a very modest wardrobe perhaps Kraft dinner, a mangy cat and one camping trip a summer....now it is a New car or Two, a Huge new mansion, bigscreen Plasma Tv, 3 computers, awesome furniture, cutting edge everything, trips, cruiseships, toys, and the very latest in super fashions, to only scratch the surface. So its much more likely you and your partner will have to both work to afford that. Its much more likely you need credit cards to afford that. Its much more likely you will find yourself waiting until you are 37 to have a baby and of course there are going to be societal reprocussions and health reprocussions from all of it.
In a similar theme to many of my older blog entries, I wish only more informed consent for people and less regrets. More reality and less media. More substance and less image.
posted by HouseFairy @ 11:19 AM
2 Comments:
I'm posting a comment two years late but I do want to answer your question: Have you "used" your degree? You just did. Your writing shows the kind of critical thinking and writing abilities that a Liberal Arts education is designed to facilitate. Could you have learned those skills a different way? Yes. Could you have learned all those Western Civilization/Humanities/Philosophy nuggets of gold on your own? Yup. But you learned them at a University where you also learned a lot about other people, the learning process, social and economic realities of urban centers and many other intangibles that can have no "price tag" attached. There is a wonderful book out right now ( in 2009 ) called 'Real Education' by Charles Murray, a LIbertarian curmudgeon disliked by most of us liberal for years since her wrote 'The Bell Curve' but, this new book is spot on about the fact that we are sending too many kids to college who don't need it and won't benefit from it ( even in the nebulous ways described above; he posits that the traditional Liberal Arts curriculum which, lets face it, used to include 3 years of Latin etc. has been 'dumbed down' to allow people who don't really have the academic aptitude to do that kind of rigorous study ( the 3 years of Latin, for instance ) to gain a 4 year degree which they then find, for all the practical purposes you suggest; useless, because what they want after all their money and trouble is a JOB and one that pays. He suggests that we raise the bar on Liberal education to it's former station and do a better job on creating new kinds of job training (and the new jobs to go with it, one hopes, in these horrible economic conditions) and put our emphasis on those with real "smarts" that can truly benefit from a genuine liberal arts education and go on to be our "leaders" in all fields. He still seems to be pandering to the "elitist" crowd but what he says, I must grudgingly admit, makes a lot of sense. And so do you!
It's interesting that you wrote this post about "using" your degree. I could not go out into the job market right now and get a decent-paying job in my field. My degree was designed to funnel people into medical and dental school. It was Exercise Physiology, and was heavy on the sciences (organic and inorganic chemistry, physics, anatomy and physiology, microbiology, genetics, that sort of thing). Not something you'd expect to be very helpful in the REAL world, but in actuality it has helped me tremendously. While in college and getting this particular degree (which I LOVED), I had no idea that the next 8 years of my life would be spent researching health and nutrition for the benefit of my son specifically and my family in general. I had no idea that anatomy would be a big thing for me in understanding what is going on inside my son that makes him the way he is. I chose that degree because I wanted to go into the medical field, but it's interesting how I wouldn't now if I had the chance. Chiropractics? Yes. Western medicine? Absolutely not. And yet, the foundation that degree gave me in the sciences and in learning how to think rationally and clearly has paved the way for what I have done with the last 9 years of my life. I love learning, and I hope I can instill that into my children by my example.
I heard it said once that if you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a generation. I believe that. Mothers have a profound influence on their kids, and education in all its forms is crucial.
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