Last summer, a friend and I had an interesting conversation looking back at college. It's weird to be in that reminiscing phase when you're so fresh out of college, but even though it was only months ago, it still seems like it is right there. Sometimes I miss it.
But, I came up with this question, which drives the blog post, and I wanted to throw it out there.
If you could go back to college, knowing what you know now, would you pick the same college or another one?
In other words, if you could do it all over again, would you pick a small state school, big state school, small private school, big private school, a college far or close, etc?
Would you spend more time studying or socializing? Working out or joining clubs?
Would you take classes that you actually cared about learning something about, not just classes that were easy?
Would you change your major or course of study?
Overall, what would you do differently?
I think it's interesting to see how you would go through college given a wiser frame of mind, not just from being older, but from going through the experience. I think it's also interesting to see people who would want to keep their experience the same and how others would like to drastically alter it for a different experience. Why not try something new?
I'm finding that, being a bit older now, I take school more seriously than I did when I was in college. And maybe that's a good thing. I was pretty social and learned a lot about the world, not just theories and facts from my classes. I think I know now to value education. I think that would change my experience completely.
So what do you think of any of the above questions?
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I would still pick my real college, I think, though I might like to try a year or two to a Catholic or other liberal arts school that was kind of like it but was bigger and had more girls(my college had 400 students and the M/F ratio was close to 60/40).
I sometimes think it would be nice to take a three or four day time-travel vacation back to my own college every now and then to see my friends, take a mid-afternoon nap, attend a few classes prepared to participate (I still couldn't maintain a good work ethic for more than about a week, however), and yes, attend a drinking party, though hopefully not a depressing one.
I cannot see myself doing a substantially different major. At my school all of the courses were required so I don't have much experience of 'normal' college classes. Since lots of people in the real world seem to be much starter than I am, I suppose I'd like to see what some of the classes that helped them get that way were like.
I would probably try to ingratiate myself more with professors or other adults so as to get a better idea about what I might be able to do well in a real career, or in graduate school. I don't really have a career, or at least not one that has much to do with how I think of myself as a person, and of course I am now at a point of life where I feel that I ought to. This is I suppose the biggest failure of my education, but it is my failure. Most of the people I went to school with, who took the same course of study I did, are competent, successful, in some cases even dynamic adults.
I used to dream a lot, by the way, that I had started over a second time at my own college and was going through the program again. In these dreams I have always either not been to a class or not turned in a paper for months, or I am certain somebody will point out that I have already graduated. I had similar dreams about being in high school playing sports again, but knowing sort of underneath that I was really 20 or 26 or whatever and knowing that somebody was going to find this out. I haven't had either of these dreams since I was about 30 though. I guess I finally outgrew the desires they represented, or something like that.
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