REEP

I’m going to just say it. In America, our schools are concerned with one thing and one thing only: getting people to graduate.

And this is a great goal, don’t get me wrong. If you don’t graduate, you really can’t do anything else. A successful graduation is the doorway to a better job, a better living environment, a better life. If you graduate from college, everything is supposed to fall into place. That is the value of an education. With an education, that just happens. And college is the end of that education.

I, personally, would have never seen this as a problem because that’s exactly what an education meant to me a year ago. Once I got to college, it was all going to be over. College was the finish line. You make it to college, it’s just a skip away to that paycheck coming in every other week. Right? Wrong.

While I was working at the factory I spent my summer in, this notion of mine (and a notion I know many people carry throughout high school to convince them the sleepless nights and AP classes are worth it) was severely shaken.

After my first week on the line, I was warming up towards the people around me. I started to talk to them during breaks about where they were from, what they enjoyed to do, how long they had been at the factory. I never asked about education; I made sure to avoid such a taboo topic with the people around me. After all, these people are in a factory. They couldn’t have gotten very far in the realm of education. Right? Wrong. Again.

The second person I talked to was a woman from Mississippi. She had family in West Virginia, an MBA degree from a rural college, a husband who worked at the port of Houston, had been working the line for… wait a second… did she just say an MBA degree?

When she told me that, it totally went over my head. I was blown out of the water when I realized she really had a master’s degree in business. A real degree. A degree. And it was real.

And she was working a factory line in the hot Houston sun sweating alongside people who had to drop out of school as early as tenth grade. She had a college degree and was working in a factory. She did say some things about being so desperate for a job in Houston, and so burned out after high school graduation and tripping her way through college to a degree, she just took a job at the first place that would hire her. Alright, weird, but I guess it’s just a fluke in the system. Right? Wrong. Three strikes, and I’m out.

This past week, I had a chance to catch up with someone I knew from a while back. She was actually my mentor throughout high school before she left for one of those east coast, big-name universities that people spend their lives fighting to get into.

She swung by a club meeting I was at totally unannounced and asked if I wanted to catch up over a cup of coffee afterwards. Of course I said yes. I couldn’t wait to catch up with her. I was looking forward to hearing the things she had to say about how much she loved college, how great it was to get into the school of her dreams, and how wonderful her life is going to be after she links her degree to her dream job.

“Jacob, I’ve just had a midlife crisis at eighteen. I’m taking this semester off, I need to clear my head, maybe get an internship while I’m here, and hopefully get my priorities in order. I swung by today because I wanted to talk to you about college. I want you to know it’s not the finish line; it’s the starting line.”

Now this is just a paraphrasing of what she said. We actually talked for about an hour, but the affect is still the same in me. It really connected what I saw in the factory a few months before.

To a senior in high school, this is a bomb shell. Every senior has that feeling to some degree, the feeling of college being the finish line. The feeling of making it into the university is more important than making out. The feeling of life in college is a cakewalk.

And that’s because that’s what we are raised on. Get into college, get into college, get into college. Not get through college, just get into college.

But America sets the finish line way too early. I’ve never had a teacher tell me about the transition from schooling into employment. The irony there is borderline extreme. The people providing me with an education don’t inform me as to how I am going to apply it.

And I know I’m not the only one.

I mean, sure I’ve had teachers ask me what I want to be, but I feel that is more for the small talk than the actual information. So here is my challenge to you, America:

Move your finish line back. Make us work harder. Make us work farther. Stop the burnouts. Stop the mantra. Break through the sphere of education and connect it to the sphere of employment.

Make it really true that college does lead to a job, not just a piece of paper that might or might not mean something.

That’s a pretty bold declaration, isn’t it? What do you think readers?

I know this is a long post, and I would love to know if you agree with me or not. Is America really setting the finish line too soon? How would you suggest changing this?

Leave your answers in the comment field below. We want to hear your point of view!