The College Experience

Originally, I read the blog post a few below this one about Menand's piece "Live and Learn" and I wanted to simply leave a comment.  But then I realized that the issues Menand brings up in his writing have significant implications for my life being that I am finishing college this year and moving on to the real world.  I have read this article a few times, once for this class and once for PS 301, and I realized that despite writing an essay based on this article for this class and the other time I have spent with this article I still have never thought about my exact reasons for attending college.  Additionally, I hadn't thought about what I feel defines success in college and whether or not GPA is a legitimate indicator of a student's worth to society.

Looking back on the classes I have taken throughout my time in college, I looked at those classes which I particularly enjoyed versus those that I didn't.  And something further struck me when I did this; I realized that the classes I enjoyed the most and that piqued my interest were also the classes that I got the best grades in.  Additionally, I realized that many of the classes I got the best grades in were those that required the most work.  And the reason I was able to do well in these classes despite their relative difficulty being greater was that I was motivated from within to study and complete assignments for those classes.

I believe this is an important idea to be taken away from Menands "Live and Learn."  In the article, apart from outlining his three theories of higher education, Menand explains that in the past students admitted to logging in many more hours studying than our generation of students does today.  Menand explains that students in past generations viewed college as a privilege to attend since the college admissions system was once autocratic rather than meritocratic. For me, this brought up an important thought in that the reason I believe that students today do not put in as much work as students of the past is that college has become more of a forced choice and necessity rather than a privilege. In other words, a lot of students now understand that they would be in effect shooting themselves in the foot if they chose to forego college and find a job straight out of high school.  As a result, many students end up in college for a multitude of reasons, except for the reason that they themselves want to go to college because of their own passion or desire to attend.

For this reason, while not picking Menand's first theory as the correct one, I am going to go against the grain and argue that GPA is a sufficient, although not perfect, way to rank and sort students after college.

The reason being that from my own experiences, I have gotten the highest GPA in classes that were not necessarily the easiest, but those in which I was passionate about the material being covered. Studying was less of a chore and more about learning.  It is true that many outside influences (parents, society, etc.) can provide motivation for studying and trying to achieve a high GPA, but I believe these motivators can only take you so far. I believe the best way to approach college is actually finding those classes in which you will be willing to do the reading, go to office hours, study extra hours, etc.  And in turn, by taking these types of classes your GPA will likely be higher than if you take a bunch of classes you view as "easy" but not interesting.  Obviously I am not saying that you will necessarily get a higher GPA if you like a class, but on the whole it is more likely that the time and effort needed to achieve a high GPA will be encouraged by a genuine interest in the subject material of that class.

And isn't this what we want in the real world? Don't we want our bankers to be genuinely interested in the business of banking? We want our doctors to genuinely care about the work they are doing, we want them to not view seeing an extra patient as a waste of time but rather as something they would spend their time doing even if it wasn't their profession.  And these types of passionate workers in whichever field they go into are likely the same people who developed a passion for their field in college. Moreover, those students in college with a high GPA are more likely to be the students that thoroughly enjoy what they are doing.  These are the kinds of adults that we want to run our society, rather than someone who floated through college with a low GPA that stemmed from never becoming engaged with any material they encountered in college.

Even though Menand did not explicitly agree that GPA is a sufficient sorting mechanism for society, I believe he would agree that the college experience is much more valuable in the case that the student actually wants to learn and is open to putting in a lot of work in order to do so.  And at the end of the day, I believe that this willingness to work at something stems from viewing that something not as work, but as a passion.  Individuals who tend to be passionate about a certain major are likely to possess higher GPA's than students who are not; additionally, I think we can all agree that we would rather have a passionate doctor or accountant than one who views it as a chore to assist us.

Although not every person is going to find a major or maybe even a class that he or she is particularly enthusiastic about, I believe the goal each student should have in mind before attending college is to find that field or industry that interests them. And even if a student is merely going to college to find a job than he or she would be better off finding a job that entices them anyway.  In the end, who doesn't want to find a job that seems like play rather than work? I know that even though I did not come in to college with this in mind, it is the one thing I hope to leave college having accomplished. The video below hammers home the point I am trying to make, and hopefully watching it makes what I am trying to argue more clear.  I believe we all should be trying to find a profession we love because this is the profession in which we are going to give the most effort and do the best job. And let's face it, that nerd that everyone had in their math or science class is likely going to be the one you would want teaching your kids or  serving as your doctor.