80,000 Dollar Piece Of Paper

Never once has the thought of not attending college crossed my mind. I have known since I started High School that I needed to go to college to get ad degree and better my future. When I met with my first counselor to begin college classes, the first thing she asked me was what I wanted to be when I grew up. I responded with “a psychologist” and she looked at me like I was stupid. She shot me a stare of confusion and pity and responded with, “well there’s a lot of fields that you can go into, have you not thought about this?” This is something that has always confused me because graduating from high school we have no former training on how to answer that question, we are only expected to know. I picked my major solely out of passion for something that came off as interesting to me.  I have never had the privilege to take a psychology class in high school but I knew about two years into high school that it was what I wanted to study. In an article titled “Did Anyone Ask the Students”, the author Jeff Selingo asks the audience some questions in regard to their opinion on a higher education. One of the question he asks is, “How do they judge the value of a college degree and weigh it against its rising price tag?” followed by, “What’s the purpose of a college education?” To these, I came up with the idea that: Essentially, the purpose of a college education would be to impress business owners and CEO’s to see something in you. Its purpose reset solely in getting you a good job that pays well so you can live comfortably until you are ready to retire. I am very convinced that a lot of college students would not be attending a place of higher learning if they knew that a potential better pay and more comfortable lifestyle would not come along with it. While this is not necessarily promised, this is most everyone’s intentions, and no one would willingly throw themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for no reason at all. In regards to one of the other questions he asks, I’m unsure a lot of the time if my education is worth the money I will be spending on it, in the long run. I have heard many older individuals say something along the lines of, “I’ll probably be paying for my school loans for the rest of my life!” I have to talk myself into the thought that it will be worth it in the long run, regardless of the price tag, or the quality of the education from my professors, that I receive. The theme that resonated with me most deeply is the one that states, “More career exploration is needed before college.” As I stated earlier, I had no knowledge of the direction in which I wanted to take my career, I only knew the field I was interested in. The only way you can explore a career of choice is if you jump into classes that cost you hundreds of dollars a semester, and you could still end up changing your mind. I don’t believe that high schools or even colleges give students enough time to figure out what it is they want to major in before they make them decide. In conclusion, I just feel like there is too much indecision and fear in a young students mind to make them decide so early on what they will put themselves into debt for.

Violence Is A Broken Home

Being productive with other humans is what our lives solely depend on. We must learn to be kind to one another, and practice respect not just towards others, but towards ourselves. In the list of twelve touch stones, I believe that we are taught this kind of respect and self-awareness.  The twelfth one in particular stood out to me at this time in my life. In the touchstone it states that we must practice slowing down, that “the speed of modern life can cause violent damage to our souls and I could not agree more. My life is a constant power struggle between things that need to be done, and the time that I never seem to have enough of, to do them in. In my days there are few hours in between and after that I use for sleep while the rest must be loaded with purpose.

I work two different jobs and go to school for what would be considered a full time schedule. Within these two jobs I usually work 6 days a week, occasionally not getting off until 1 o’clock in the morning, just to get off, do some homework and go to sleep, before school the next morning. I have never quite learned how to take things slowly and now that I have grown up and taken on these responsibilities, I would do anything to go back to freshman year of high school and just, relax. My entire day is a plan, it is always scheduled and there has not been time to slow down in quite some time.

Philosopher Thomas Merton was the brain behind the quote in which I referred to earlier. I personally think the speed at which I live my life is damaging to me at times and leaves me far more of a stressed and anxious person then I deserve to be. To say that I get no free time for my social life, would be false, but I have realized over the past couple years that I have not made time for myself. By saying that we not only cause damage but, ‘violent damage’ to our souls, speaks to me deeply. While we can’t entirely escape our reality, I feel we need to learn how to control our busy lives and make more time for what puts us at one with our souls.

I like to believe that our bodies are just homes for our souls to live.  And like a normal home that gets beat down by the elements, we are the same. I think what is most important is how we treat our souls because whether you die young or old, brittle or brand new, you have one thing that will live on and it’s your soul. This taught me that while we have to keep up with modern life to stay alive, that it is most important for us to slow down on occasion in order for us to keep our souls healthy. We must learn to balance the way that we live and leave time for relaxation and spiritual healing or else surrender our healthy souls to violent self-interactions.