Last weekend, while many of you were studying, I was cheering my roommate on as he relocated our La-Z-Boy off our porch and onto the sidewalk.

With that said, as midterms roll around I often wonder, “Why am I here?” Is it to pursue knowledge? I doubt it — if that were true I would probably be keeping up with all of my readings. But it got me thinking: Is this college? I pessimistically believe the higher education system has been transformed from the quest for wisdom to the pursuit of a piece of paper. A piece of paper that will grant me the freedom to pursue uninteresting $50,000-plus jobs. This presses me to wonder whether or not life is all about the pursuit… of… very mundane… tangible things?

That’s why so many people struggle with the idea of college. Although at one time it did not really matter what your major was, an ever-dwindling job market has forced young adults to plan out their lives more and more in advance. We begin to sacrifice the things we love for the things we believe will grant us the most success. I’m sorry, but when has financial analysis ever been interesting to a 19-year-old?

I find myself longing for the days when college was about learning things at your own pace, instead of conforming to this predetermined timetable. All of these requirements — Com A, QR B — make one feel like education has turned from a creative project to a science experiment. Do you really learn anything afterward? Maybe. But if you do, it’s minimal. For instance, I now know that Sylvester Stallone was a staple of the Hollywood blockbuster of the 1990s, reflecting a return to patriotism in the movies, but does that mean anything to me? No. Education has turned into such a narrow pathway that more and more students disassociate themselves from the actual task of learning. Instead, they learn how to abuse the system to maintain good grades. Cheating, plagiarism — they’re all detrimental practices that can be easily justified when you’re “just trying to graduate.” But that’s not supposed to be the point. You’re supposed to want to learn more. So why don’t we?

From what I can tell, everything I’ve done has been in the name of “success.” I don’t know what “success” is, and I don’t think anyone else really does either. Sure, it can mean money, or security, but is that something to spend your life working for? Regardless of all this uncertainty, there is one thing that college will always provide us: an opportunity. An opportunity to try new things, meet new people and more importantly, make really bad decisions. Whether we realize it or not, it is only in college that we have these limitless opportunities we take for granted. The kegs, the student organizations, the beer bongs, the athletic teams, all of the bars and all these young people in one small space. We get to hold on to our youth for four more years, while crabby old people beg us to let it go. When else in life do you have this opportunity? The successes and failures we experience in college, no matter what the subject, teach us all valuable lessons. My first week here I tried to make a vodka-watermelon, but I failed miserably. But I learned how to turn $9.99 vodka into $9.99 watermelon-flavored vodka. It was delicious, and then I got to toss the watermelon off the porch. College teaches us how to fail and then, most importantly, how to learn something from our failures.

So, it is with great optimism that I say college is about life experience. The things you learn are just as important as the way in which you learn them. We’ve been conditioned to believe that life is a journey with a serious point at the end. That everything we do, it’s all in the name of this success that one day will be realized. “But,” as Allan Watts pointed out, “we missed the point. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing and dance while the music was being played.”

To the watermelon store!

Alex Frecon ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English.