Priorities

“Oh, you’re an English major, huh? Cool…. So, what are you going to do with that?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.

When you think about college degrees, chances are you will start thinking about which students are more likely to get a job after they graduate. We all know that the accounting majors will have a job and the engineers (whatever it is they actually do) will too. The family life majors will probably not graduate, since they’re getting married this semester—ten bucks says they marry one of the business majors who already has a job. And so it goes, you get the picture.

But why are the jobs we’ll have in the future more important than the lessons we’re learning now along the way? They shouldn’t be.

Yes, I will get a degree; yes, I will get a job (contrary to popular belief, I have lots of job options). However, if, for some reason, I didn’t get a job, that doesn’t mean that college was a waste of time. I have learned more about literature and the world and myself than I even thought was possible, and that learning will serve me in more areas of my life than just the job search.

I think it’s pretty clear that the learning should be the most important part of education, and that seems self-evident until you hear a conversation like this.

“Why are you going to college?”

“I’m going to be pre-med, and then in med school I’ll probably specialize and be a cardiologist.”

Wouldn’t we live in a better world if a more common answer was, “I’m going to school to learn more about medicine; it’s so interesting! Hopefully, I’ll be able to specialize in cardiology and learn more about the heart.”

So, are we here because we want to learn? Or is this just a means to an end?