I'm really angry about my classes. That is to say, I'm really pissed off that I'm currently a student. That may be a dumb thing to be mad about, considering I got myself in this predicament, but I think what makes me most angry is that I'm angry at all.When I quit college the first time around, I did so because I was sick of the bullshit of college bureaucracy. I just wanted to build my family and get on with life, and every week that passed was a giant blinking sign that I was just wasting my time.
So I quit.
Now that I'm back to school for the second time, I've made it three semesters and I'm back to feeling the same way. Kyle and I have spent the day talking about it and agreed that going back to school, has really messed up our family. I went back to college to continue educating myself, but I realized over the summer that the education I was getting wasn't worth the effort I was putting into it. I hoped that having a normal 16 week semester, with a reduced course load would help ease some of the tension my studies were putting on me and the family, but I'm sitting here, nearly at the halfway point, and all I can feel is an increasing resentment.
I'm very unhappy with college. I started off great, but after that first semester, everything has just rocketed downhill. I'm not learning anything, and what used to be an eager anticipation to complete assignments has become a daily root canal. It's not the workload or subject matter that's putting the stress on my shoulders, it's once again the bureaucratic bullshit. It's professors who will dish out 72% grades without taking the time to explain why such a huge chunk of points have been docked. I did it wrong? Okay, tell me what I did wrong!
I think it's fair to assume that the problem is that I don't have the right mentality for college. I don't view this as an extension of high school. I don't believe that professors have some almighty power. On the contrary, I've been in the outside world enough to know that this is a business transaction. I am paying the school to pay the instructors to teach me what I want to know. The fact that I come out of these classes feeling dumber than I went in is a sure sign I'm not getting what I am paying for. I'm not after some stupid piece of paper that says I can get a job now. I'm looking for actual knowledge, for the sake of knowledge. The only thing I've gained since returning to college is 20 pounds. Not exactly the sort of accomplishment I was going for.
But I'm not going to quit.
Kyle made a great analogy tonight that sums up who I am. I'm a taste-tester. I like to take little bites of everything so that I have the experience of knowing what everything tastes like. If I don't like the first few bites, I don't waste time eating the rest of the plate. There are quite a few people who believe you should eat the whole thing, and that's great for them. I'd rather move on to another dish in hopes that I'll maybe find something worth eating.
College, for me, is like a plate of broccoli. It tastes awful, especially the longer I'm eating it, but the reality is that it's full of nutrition that my body needs. My first plan of attack was to hurry, cram as much as I could into my mouth, chew, and swallow, to be done with it as fast as possible. When I found more broccoli hidden behind another broccoli, I accepted that I might need to take smaller bites, and maybe mix them in with some mashed potatoes.
I'm flexible enough to understand now that, if I'm to finish college, I'm going to need to take even smaller bites, and bury it in a giant pile of cheese so that I don't even really notice it's there. I'm backing it down to one class per semester starting in the spring. This is a huge departure from my original plan, but I can't stress enough that, if I don't drastically change something, there's no way I'm going to graduate. I'm so blinkin' miserable, and I miss my family and friends, and I miss reading books for fun, and watching movies! I miss going to sleep without writing papers or doing math problems in my head all night. I miss living my life, and I want to stop torturing myself with all the damn broccoli!
