When I got out of high school, I prided myself on my math abilities, so when I went to college, I majored in math and computer science. Unfortunately, when I got to advanced courses, I did poorly. I spent six years taking a year and a half of calculus. As my GPA dropped, I rescued it with English lit courses, which I loved, but I didn't want to major in it because I was afraid there was no future in English lit. Finally, my GPA got so low that my mother demanded I change my major to English lit or get out of college. I did so graduated with a BA in English lit with a math minor, and found that my worst fears were confirmed..My degree was vocationally worthless. Without any experience outside of college, not even a driver's license, I spent the next ten years broke and jobless, except for short stints as a substitute teacher and a camp counselor. More than once, I cried to my mother, "What did I do this for? What is the point to a degree that doesn't get me a job?".
After ten years, I did get a job at a screen printing shop, but my degree had nothing to do with it. I am the only one in my shop with any more than a high school diploma and many of my coworkers don't even have that.
So why did I do it? What is the purpose of a degree besides a great job? After a lot of thought, I figured some answers.
One reason I did it was because it was what my family did and, despite my disability, I was as good as anybody else in my family. My family went to college, got professional degrees and became lawyers, teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, etc.
Another reason is it's the place for people who enjoy using their heads. Though it took me six years to study three semesters of calculus I loved the logic and reasoning it involved. When I switched to English lit, I found that I loved Shakespeare, not just the written work, but getting into the heads of the Bard and the people of his time. I've carried that joy with me in pursuits online, long after college.
There's also what some of the experts say. It teaches you how to read, write and do mathematics, not the basic stuff you learned in grammar school, but the kind of profound stuff that people want to read and gets published, like this article here.
I once bought three or four items at a drug store. I didn't know the exact price, but my simple math skills, which I'd kept in constant practice in college, told me that they didn't add up to more that seven or eight dollars, so I knew enough to challenge the cashier who insisted it must be twelve dollars because the computerized cash register said so.
Finally, there are people who you might want to impress with just the degree, even if it doesn't get you money. I got nowhere in my failure of a teaching career, but this did impress all my bosses and got me the jobs I had for eighteen years.
I've been out of work now for two years, pretty much retired, spending time making art. I'm not that good at it, so I've come back to college, just to improve my art, without any dreams of future careers. Maybe I'll get a degree. Maybe I won't. Doesn't matter. I'm looking for skill, not a piece of paper.
So, for the past twenty-five years, I've been asking myself, why did I go to college? Did I get anything from it or did I waste ten years.
