Higher Education

With graduation here, I'm getting some of the most annoying questions asked of me over and over again. "How do you graduate?" and "What are you doing for college?"

The problem here is there are so many options, I don't know!

The question that needs more answering here is the college question. Depending on that answer, we can continue onto the graduation question. I know it's kind of backwards, but that's how it has to be done because what you want to do later determines what you have to do now to get there.

Right now, I'm leaning towards not going to college and entering the workforce instead. This is a whole lot cheaper, and honestly, I don't know that college is worth it. That is a lot of time, energy, and money to spend. And what do you get for it? A piece of paper and facts pounded into your head. The question is, how much are those facts and piece of paper worth? I'm thinking, not as much as they cost. How far does a degree really get you now days? Unemployment among college graduates is rising. That makes it really difficult to pay off student debt.

How much of that information could you learn, filtering out the stuff you didn't want to learn, from reading? If you want to learn about something, I would like to re-write a common phrase: there's a BOOK for that! You know, those things with pages? That you turn, and the paper has words on it? Yeah, those things! You can learn so many things from books. You just need to know what ones to read, and how to read them. Fictional literature can be educational if you know how to read and apply it. Here are some things that can help in this endeavor:

A colloquium group helps you see things you may not have noticed or paid much attention to while reading, and helps you expand those ideas you had while reading. I started participating in a colloquium group with adults when I was twelve. It was an amazing thing. Even when we got off topic, there were still great thoughts being shared. I learned some things I would not have without doing that. A colloquium group is not the same as a book group. You discuss ideas from books or articles as opposed to story lines. You have a moderator that keeps the discussion moving, and talk about the how, the why, what the author was trying to get at, and other like minded things. I wish I had the opportunity to do this now that I'm more mature and understand things better.

A mentor is another useful resource. A mentor can guide you to what books you should read, ask you questions about what you are reading to get you thinking, give you assignments to apply what you are learning or to learn more, and be there to ask questions of to help you understand something you are not grasping.

Another thing I have found useful is writing. I have been enamored by something this past week and a half, (which I should be posting about tomorrow, or I will not be happy with myself!) and had just started writing in my journal again just before the inciting incident. It has been so useful to write down what I've been thinking and in so doing it has made me think more, and my thoughts have been more organized. It has also helped me think more critically, and has made me come to some realizations. I filled almost a quarter of my journal in a week with how much I have been writing in it. It is interesting because I have been reading an older English book, (about turn of the century) some of the characterization of the language has seeped into what I write. Because I think faster than I write, It makes me think more about what I am writing. Then of course sometimes I think much faster than I am writing, and leave out something, and then I have to add an addendum to what I wrote because it doesn't make sense without it. And then there are those times you leave what you are writing for a moment, but are still thinking about what you were writing, and then when you come back you can't remember what you decided as you were gone that you were going to write! Like right now. That is so annoying. Ah, that's what it was. Writing is also helpful because you keep a record of what you have learned and what you were thinking. Then you can come back to it at some later point.

One thing I think affects your learning is what music you listen to while you are reading/learning. I find listening to classical music helps me think, doesn't distract me, and keeps me from getting distracted form outside influences. When I listen to my pop music, (about 80s or older, I don't care for the stuff from this decade) I find it harder to concentrate. (So what does that indicate about my brother listening to "The Song that Doesn't End" while doing math?)

A combination of these things is what I think you need for a higher education. For some people, they can get this at a college, and it will be worth it to them. You need to prayerfully decide what is best for you. Right now, I think what is best for me is to work, use the resources I have listed above, and take some free courses from MIT as described here. I value learning and education, but I don't know that I need to spend thousands of dollars on expensive college classes. I can spend that money on other things, such as necessities and books, not get into deep debt, and do things for little or no cost.