Going To College

This blog post was originally written on 19 February 2006. It is reproduced here for archival purposes and your reading pleasure. It is reproduced as accurately as possible with no style, mechanical, or spelling corrections whatsoever.

Current mood: cheerful

A while back I said that I would try to blog every other night. Well obviously that isn't going to happen. I don't have enough motivation to blog that often. (which really means I don't have enought creativity to blog that often) Anyway thanks for waiting it out.

Tonight's Topic: Going to College?
The Thoughts of a HighSchool Senior

As a highschool senior, for nearly a year now, it has been nearly impossible for me to have a conversation with an adult (funny because technically I'm an adult now) about anything other than college. Come to think of it, it's pretty hard to talk to anyone without college coming up. Eveyone wants to know how many places I've applied, and how many scholorship's I've gotten, and what my major will be. It's kind of depressing really to think that everyone is so excited about the future that they have forgotten about the next four to five months of my life completely

Before I go any further with this let me point out that being a mormon, (or a christian in general for that matter) I try to live my life by imitating Jesus. Jesus never went to college and he turned out to be a pretty cool dude. But I digress.

Is college really necessary? I can think of quite a few people ( in addition to Jesus) who have lived perfectly complete lives without college. What if someone has a plan to start his own business after highschool. Or what if he wants to travel? Or what if he wants to get married, and live off of his wife the wives lived off of their husbands centuries ago? Not long ago college was something that only a select few very intelegnt students attended. It has been sugested that since there is now more information available in nearly every subject, that it takes longer for someone to learn it all. But isn't general knowledge what we are supposed to acheive in highschool? ( Is highschool really only one word? That feels weird.) As a highschool student I can say for sure that I spen way more time at school sleeping and screwing around than I do learning. Additionally, ragardless of wether you think that college is necessary or not, isn't it something that is an individual choice? Wouldn't it be nice if we seniors could make that choice without being pressured from every angle?

Applying to colllege is a long often expensive process. I can't help but wonder how many colleges is the right number to apply to. I understand applying to your choice college and a backup in case you don't get in. But some people apply to four or five. Is it that there are backups for backups? like a list where you go to the best one that you get accepted into? That seems logical. Of course it is very expensive to apply to that many colleges. One could argue that colleges are like butt holes. You need one, but you certainly don't need two.

Another hot topic is funding college. How on earth am I supposed to afford four years of school? Wouldn't it be nice if the government provided some kind of useful public education like they are supposed to. Is it really fair that we pay taxes for education, but still have to pay for our own education in the end. Wouldn't it be nice if the tax money payed for the students to learn instead of paying to hire subs when the faculty decides to go on strike?

This was one of my less structured blogs, and it didn't have one specific issue to discuss, but I think I expressed some common thoughts among senoirs. please feel free to post any thoughts or ideas as comments. I expect comments from people other than seniors!! The Ideas of the non-senior friends are probably less biased anyway.

love, Joshy Woshy

It seems like this was more of a general frustrated vent than an actual issue blog at the time, but I seem to have hit some actual issues anyway. The biggest one is that high school students should enjoy high school. That is as true as the day I said it, and I see now that it is true about everything. College students should enjoy college. Stop worrying about jobs all that crap.

Everyone should make the most of where they are and enjoy it, because chances are, even if it seems kind of sucky, you will miss it when it's gone. For example I had a small crappy dirty apartment in China, and I miss the heck out of it now. Here's another example. A few years ago I went on a cross-country motorcycle trip with my friend Nate. We had almost no food. We had no place to stay some nights. It rained like crazy, and was really cold. That sounds pretty crappy huh? It was actually one of the best weeks of my life. Even when I go running for the first time in months and feel like terrible and want to quit, I try to tell myself to enjoy it because one day I'm going to be old and grey and unable to run, and I bet when that day comes I'd give anything to experience sore legs and oxygen debt just one more time. Of course it's hard to keep that mentality when I'm actually in oxygen debt :)

I'd love to see your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

love, Joshy Woshy