College Experience
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 08 Apr 2006 14:31:00 GMT
So what is the “college experience”?
This was a topic on this week’s O.C. that got me thinking that maybe some people had a much better experience in college than I did. Without going into too many details, here are some of the highlights of my Berkeley experience:
- Being dropped off on the sidewalk with a suitcase and sleeping bag by parents who wished me luck in finding a place to live.
- An advisor who was asked by a bewildered freshman what classes to take and said “Take some math, physics and chemistry, and, oh, I have to go now, I am late for my lunch date.”
- Professors who would sneak out of office hours so they didn’t have to answer questions from pesky undergraduates.
- TA’s that didn’t really speak the language we refer to as English.
- Receiving a warning by the physics department after taking a class they considered frivolous: French 101.
- A fraternity that considered the ability to consume massive amounts of alcohol the most desirable trait one could have.
- A best friend that was hit and killed by a drunken teenage girl as he was finishing up a morning surfing session.
- Coming down with Ebstein Barr/Chronic Fatigue my junior year and having to take incompletes in all my classes and drop out for a semester.
Ok, I realize this was probably not the most normal college experience. So let’s hear from my few faithful readers about their college experience. Was college a life changing experience for you? Did you have a professor that encouraged you and set you on a career path you love? Did you meet someone who today is still your best friend? Or spouse? Do you look back at that time as the best in your life?
Why is this important? Well, my son will be going into Junior High next year and is not all that interested in school. If this whole college thing is overrated, maybe he would be happier and more successful in life overall going into a trade. So should I push him to study hard and make good grades so he can get into a good college? Or should I step back and let him follow a different path? This is a hard question and I don’t want to base it on my own college memories, but rather what he is likely to experience. So any college experiences you would like to share would be helpful.
Whether or not the “College Experience” is a time of great joy, it is what enables us to be the people we are today. I don’t look back at my own experiences at college with great affection, but my education has enabled me to do just about everthing good in my life: have a satisfying career, money to spare, met my wife, etc. I don’t think there were any specific life-changing events in school, but collectively they led me to where I am today. Could I have found equivalently satisfying opportunities through a different path? I don’t know, but I doubt it.
Sounds kind of brutal. I’m glad you turned out ok :-)
I had at least one of the experiences you mentioned: I met my future wife my freshman year. Washington University was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Berkeley in a lot of ways, it sounds like. The school was much smaller, and while we didn’t have a lot of room for electives in the curriculum, we could take a pretty wide range of classes as our (few) electives. I also had a lot of flexibility to take graduate classes as an undergrad, so I could pursue whatever interested me.
I enjoyed my freshman year a lot (and it wasn’t all due to J, though I’m sure she contributed :-)). I liked being on my own, meeting new people, and learning new things. I liked it so much that I have a bias against the live-at-home-go-to-community -college-for-two-years approach that is popular in California.
I especially liked getting to redefine myself absent anyone else’s preconceived notions about who I was or what I was doing (not that I hated high school or my friends there, but I wasn’t in the “in” clique either). I don’t think I’d have had that experience at the University of Illinois where a lot of kids from my high school went.
When I thought about how I got there while I was in college, I realized that nobody had pushed me to go or not go. The most my mom did was move to a high school district where going to college was the norm, and visit the Washington University campus once during a vacation my junior year. In hindsight, I wish I’d known more when I was a freshman in high school, but thinking back I appreciate the lack of pressure – I created enough on my own.
Maybe it’s my nature to block out the bad stuff, but when I think back on the years I spent at Washington U, they are fond memories of the people and the institution.
Some people were shocked about being dropped off on the sidewalk, but it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounded. During that week, I was staying in the dorms and then it was hoped that I would join a fraternity and be able to move in immediately afterwards—which is what happened.