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Why am I wasting my time in college??
I've been going to college for about eight years now. I'm about ten classes away from my BA in English, and as I get closer and closer, I feel like I'm wasting my time. First of all, what the hell am I going to do with this degree? I am not going to teach. They don't exactly list jobs in the Help Wanted section that say "English Major Wanted". Sure, I can quote Hamlet by rote and rattle off poems by Wallace Stevens and write a paper that will knock your socks off. I can speak intelligently and at length on any number of novels and plays and diagram sentences and spell the heck out of anyone. I know how to use "debacle" in a sentence correctly.
But what's the point? My own self knowledge? I can stay home and read books.
Let's talk about the school I attend, the ever lovely Rowan University. I would get a MUCH better education if I attended Rutgers University in Camden, but I'd need to take an additional 30 or 40 credits just to get a degree there that I don't need. I'll be in school til I'm forty. So I'm at Rowan, because their requirements are lower. Credit wise.
IQ wise, apparently, too.
My classes are full of morons. The classes themselves for the most part are jokes. I took a class in British Literature taught by the head of the department. Great course, huh? Um...no. He seemed like a very intelligent and interesting man. Unfortunately his class was like "Pre-Romanticism's Greatest Hits". One night we walked in and did The Canterbury Tales, some John Donne poetry, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. OK, I exaggerate. A little. But not much. He sped through centuries of lit so fast my head spun. And most of the class failed. Not because of him. His tests were essay and short answer questions...the the essay questions were difficult. I got an A in the course because I have a clue and I study. The kids in this class (and yes, I mean kids) were all English majors and if any of them ever teach my children I shall run screaming in the other direction. I have never heard so many stupid questions in my entire life.
My US Government survey course this semester is even worse. The professor puts "sample quizzes" in the library before each test so we have something to "study by". Well, the tests are culled directly from those quizzes. I could never go to class and get an A. Talk about phoning it in.
I don't know what's more frightening: the fact that I attend this school, the fact that they apparently let anyone into it, or the fact that Rowan is a well-known teaching college. The quality of education nowadays already stinks enough without putting these idiots behind teacher's desks. I am frequently appalled there.
So I ask again: why am I wasting my time there?
Will I ever have an answer to this question?
~*~Mel~*~
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