Manic Monday

I've been reading some of my friends' blogs lately, and decided I would make one because I often find myself wanting to share sometimes random thoughts with people but never know how to do it without trying to remember it for too long; which usually end results in apathy or forgetfulness on my part.

I sat on my laptop last night creating this thing with doubt in my mind that I would never think of something to write or I would sound silly when I posted, but I'll throw that notion to the wind with the inspiration I had today to write my first blog post.

Now, I'm sure many others have pondered this, but today I started thinking about how ridiculous the course of general education is. The framework goes a little like this. You stay home and go to grade school for about 18 years of your life, then you get thrown into a completely different, more independent atmosphere in college for generally four years and then you're thrown out into the "real world." I know this isn't the framework for every American kid, but it was mine, and I'd like to talk about how odd it is when you think about it.

First, I'd like to talk about the transition from high school to college. Some people don't understand why some people stay really close to home when they go to college, but you know, it really is a hard transition. You've been taken care of for a good part of 18 years (which is a long time at this point in your life) and now you get thrown out and are expected to live fairly independently in college and prepare yourself for the world for about 4 years. A significantly small portion of time considering you spent 14 years preparing for college. I suppose life wouldn't make much sense to us if it was done differently, but in retrospect it seems like such an absurd plan.

What really concerns me though, seeing as it is present in my life now, is the transition from college to the "real world." I put it in quotes because I'm not even quite sure what that is supposed to mean. This four years of my life is spent preparing for my career. The way to make the dough. Okay, cool, I get it, but with a major as intensive as mine, when do I get to learn about buying a home, preparing to work while balancing a family, paying all sorts of bills? When I was younger I always just thought someone would sit down with me and tell me all of those things, now I realize I just have to pick these things up on my own. Weird.

Another point I'd like to make is the "independent" lifestyle college presents. Is it really all that independent? Sure I'm doing my own laundry now, but I owe this college for giving me food, supplying me with health care, security, housing, and clean facilities. I am surrounded by people to support me at all times whether it be professors or friends. I'm lucky it will even help me find a job. The point is, what happens after I leave this still very secure point of my life? I find myself anticipating it all the time, and at the same time feeling incredibly overwhelmed. I had 10+ years to think about going to college. I now only have 2.5 years to think about the rest of my existence. Seems odd.

I guess that's really all I have to say. You can think on that one for a while.
In other news I'm incredibly surprised the school store doesn't sell single or double packs of dry-erase markers. I don't want to spend 6 dollars on a generic brand of dry-erase markers... I just don't. All I want to do is give a single dry-erase marker to one of my professors because he never has one and is always using the left-over ones from the other classrooms that run out of ink. It's frustrating.

PEACE.