talk me into staying in college.

[Fox]

Please?

[Ryan T.]

Please?

 

[Probing and clarifying question]?

[neo]

Please?

why do you not want to stay in college? who is paying for it? could you have a job if you werent in school? what would do you really want to do? what are you studying? how many years have you been in college?

[Marblehead]

Hey Fox!

 

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stay in college and get that degree. Regardless of what you think about it the market likes to see people with degrees. If you are able to handle it financially just do it.

 

Maybe a change of major? If you have a minor maybe switch the two? Or maybe add a minor if you have none?

 

We have choices in life and while it is true that we are supposed to live for the moment I can assure you that it is very important to consider our future well-being as well.

 

Best wishes with your choices.

 

Be well!

[h.uriahr]

Please?

Stay in college so you dont have to work 14 hours a day framing, throwing up scaffold, pouring concrete or any other forms of hard labor...unless you dig that sort of thing.

[Fox]

I actually typed a long reasoning as to why I was thinking of taking atleast a semester off, but my internet was on the fritz. I have just been so embedded in the moment, and I have loved where I am with my friends and girlfriend. My parents were paying for college, well the small bits my loans didn't cover but since they recently filed for bankruptcy its a bit tough for them to support me in the slightest, I'm a junior this fall, so I'm halfway there, I've just had this really existential moment, or moments lately where I've been questioning the point of things. My father works with his hands and has always pushed for me to get a degree, and seeing him kill himself slowly with work is definitely a motive for staying, but I don't know, I just feel like I have everything I need, I just needed a slight boost back into reality, whatever reality may be. Ha, and I'm aware I am or was coming off as feeling sorry for myself, I had a long written reason but with typing this on my phone all I could salvage was the word please, ha. I don't know guys, what are some of your occupations and degrees and such? Just curious. Of course I am enrolling, it was just hard not being able to afford this semester and having to borrow money from my already broke parents. But all should be well.

[Ryan T.]

I actually typed a long reasoning as to why I was thinking of taking atleast a semester off, but my internet was on the fritz. I have just been so embedded in the moment, and I have loved where I am with my friends and girlfriend. My parents were paying for college, well the small bits my loans didn't cover but since they recently filed for bankruptcy its a bit tough for them to support me in the slightest, I'm a junior this fall, so I'm halfway there, I've just had this really existential moment, or moments lately where I've been questioning the point of things. My father works with his hands and has always pushed for me to get a degree, and seeing him kill himself slowly with work is definitely a motive for staying, but I don't know, I just feel like I have everything I need, I just needed a slight boost back into reality, whatever reality may be. Ha, and I'm aware I am or was coming off as feeling sorry for myself, I had a long written reason but with typing this on my phone all I could salvage was the word please, ha. I don't know guys, what are some of your occupations and degrees and such? Just curious. Of course I am enrolling, it was just hard not being able to afford this semester and having to borrow money from my already broke parents. But all should be well.

 

Maybe it doesn't need to be all or nothing. Maybe after this current or next semester you lighten your class-load so you can work more and have school cost less. It will take longer to finish school but there is nothing wrong with that.

 

I am just starting post-high school education this semester after being out of school almost 20 years. It will probably take me a little over 6 years to get the 4-year degree I intend to get as I work full-time and try to continue studying a couple of styles of Chinese boxing.

 

Ultimately a person just needs to make sure they will be okay with the decisions they make. Remember, it is always better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done.

[thelerner]

Look at the alternatives. Look closely at the semi-worse case (the real worse case you don't want to know) scenario. Apply to a few fast food joints and telemarketing firms. Most will turn you down flat, maybe one will hire you. Take the job, even if its part time. Do it for two weeks, multiply the experience by full time and living on that salary, then compare it to college life. That will give you a realistic view of what your choices are.

 

There's a nasty recession going on, people are losing there homes and livelihoods left and right. Don't throw away wonderful opportunities because you don't feel like it. There is a way to make college work for you. Find it.

 

Contact the schools financial people, because your situation (parents) have changed they may be able to cut you some slack or push you to the top of the line in work/study or arrange no interest til you leave school loan.

 

 

Michael

[Marblehead]

Follow your heart Fox, but make sure you understand reality. The better you qualify yourself for employment the better employment you will get.

 

Best Wishes!

 

Be well!

[October Gray]

I have to say Marblehead took the words from my mouth yet again. I do wish you well.

[Encephalon]

What a great subject. I haven't been in here in a while but this is too good to pass up.

 

I finally finished my master's thesis this week. It may help. It's a social science degree, sought after when the prospect of making a living teaching was still viable. I'm deleriously happy that college is over for me, even though I loved most of it and always had terrific classmates. However...

 

As you may know already, consumer culture is over. Most of us don't know it yet, but the smart Taoists in here are probably up to speed. The economy will only continue to contract, unemployment will continue to go up, and the public treasury will continue to be looted. The wealth of the nation will continue to be harvested from the American working class until the harvesters move on, or collapse like everyone else. It is the Post-Oil scenario; I encourage you to bone up on that instead of taking my word for it.

 

The survivors will join Transition Towns. http://transitionculture.org/

 

Scan yourself deeply and honestly for your own attributes that would be of service in a post-oil environment. Isolate your gifts and work like hell to turn those gifts into skills. Taoists were natural survivalists (without all the weird baggage of contemporary survivalists). Food production will be the single most important industry probably by 2020, but if you can do anything that doesn't require a working electrical socket, by all means, learn it well. Animal husbandry, medical skills, appropriate technology, small scale electricity generation, alternative architecture/construction. The key theme: become as useful as you can to yourself and others, and your life will be vastly more meaningful than "getting a job after college" (if you can find one).

 

With a master's in geography, I can pretty much tell you what the BIG themes are with my home planet, and I could possibly even tell you what chi is and what the story is with human beings. But, I'm going back to my medical stuff. The nei kung and pranic healing is just too friggin' awesome. If things work out I may go to nursing school, or opt for Chinese Medicine,

 

But enough about me. Stay in college if your soul knows that you must at acquire the basic Taoist virtue of delaying gratification and bringing big personal achievements to fruition. If you're looking for an excuse to bail, then first consider your subject matter with an eye for amending it. At least learn how to speak, write, read, and compute well. But if you're already literate and numerate with half a brain, read The Long Emergency, by James Kunstler and ask yourself how you would navigate through such a future. Transition Towns are springing up all over the world, mostly in the UK, and if you acquire the means to be a productive member of one of them, you will be the 21st century Taoist, rooted in your community, the scholar/warrior.

 

Anything you can learn NOW to improve your chances, in leiu of college, would be worth it.

 

I attempted to draw important parallels between traditional Taoist communities and contemporary ecologically-based, off-the-grid type intentional communities, but the subject didn't resonate here very well. I would like to think that contemporary Buddhists and Taoists will be the vanguard into a new era of sustainability, but it just could be my imagination amusing itself.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited August 8, 2009 by Blasto

[Sloppy Zhang]

I'm in college myself, and it's easy to see how it can be troubling.

 

On the one hand, you see the "beaten path", take your classes, do some internships, get your degree, get a job. Do that job for X number of years, family and kids along the way, retire. (I think there's a thread about this and how important it is to you )

 

And then on the other hand there's the "step off the beaten path", do your own kinda thing, and see what happens. There's no way to really look twenty, thirty, forty years down the line with this one.

 

Bottom line is, there are too many factors to even HAVE a bottom line. Some people get the degree, and the job, and become respectable members of a big business and wind up making tons of cash, have private planes, and retire years before their time. Then lots of other people with the same educational background and experiences who wind up grinding out the same job year after year, they work hard, but get little to no rewards, and at the end of their career they are barely hanging on.

 

The current economy doesn't help either. Older folks are losing money they had planned to retire with, younger folks are getting passed up for jobs they would have had to turn down (too many offerings) just three or four years prior.

 

Then with the whole "do your own thing", well, plenty of people wind up striking out on their own, but never get off the ground, wind up in low income forever. Some people, on the other hand, make it rich in their own business, have a new idea, and make more money and have more success than they'd ever have sticking to the beaten path.

 

The problem is you'll just never know.

 

And, of course, that's speaking from a money/financial security point of view. There are plenty of other ways of gauging a fulfilled existence, sky diving, rocky mountain climbing, etc etc..... but that requires money to begin with

 

I'm still weighing some options myself, so I can't really help you make a decision, sorry but that's how I see it.

Edited August 8, 2009 by Sloppy Zhang

[Mal]

Please?

 

Do what you need to do

 

All I can say is there are only 2 things I really regret in my life and one of them is not finishing my honors project.

 

Sure I have a BA

but it could have easily been

BPsych(Hons)

 

 

Now that I'm older and would actually like to get into counseling and helping people not having option 2 basically means 2 years of study before I can do 2 more years of study to get to where I would like to be........

 

Education is like lubrication... too much is almost enough.

[innerspace_cadet]

I graduated from college, which was a stepping stone for getting my master's degree in library science, itself a stepping stone to acquiring a job as a librarian. And I love being a librarian. So don't ever give up on your college degree. It opens doors.

 

Of course, you don't need a college degree to be successful, but it helps.

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

You also need to make sure that you are in a school that nourishes and nurtures you. Personally, I would never have made it if I had gone to a big state school. I went to a small private collage for undergrad with 20 students or less per class. I took classes that interested me and that furthered my spiritual practice (I was an East Asian Studies major) and I became very close friends with several of my professors (who had the time for their students, because they were not required to do research).

 

Grad school was even better, because I was able to go to St. John's College for their Eastern Classics program. So I was in beautiful Santa Fe, in the midst of their spiritual culture, studying all of the ancient classics, first hand, and talking about them with like minded, scholarly people. No tests, no pressure; just read the classics and have Socratic seminar discussions. It was an amazing program.

 

Now I am teaching at a Great Books high school, so I get to spend all day reading Socrates, Nietzsche, the bible, etc. (unabridged!!) with these kids and have meaningful, critical discussions... everyday!

 

My point is just this: Do what you love and be where you love to be every step of the way. Never turn any major part of your life into a means to an end. Every part should be the end in itself and every part should bring you joy.

[Creation]

Fox,

 

This topic is very important to me because I dropped out of college after my freshman year, due to being so utterly miserable at my school that it defied words, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. Not only do we share a name, an interest in Taoism, and a dislike of college, I also am 20, would be a junior if I hadn't dropped out, and have strong roots in Christianity. So it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

 

The conventional replies get a degree of so you can get a better job, the importance of delayed gratification and self-discipline have been repeated to me endlessly and mean as little to me as they always have. So two posts here have made me very happy. Namely,

 

Blasto,

In the United States, the economic, medical, political, and educational systems are all so completely dysfunctional and their dysfunctions are all interlocked together. A conscientious young person looking at the prospect of entering into this system can not help but be repulsed. Of course, society will always have problems and one can't just run away and expect to make spiritual progress. But the sicker the system the more difficult it is to enter into it without detrimental effects, and it is important in such times to emphasize how there are people trying to live a different way. I am certainly guilty of feeling sorry for myself, but there must be a better way than following the conveyor belt like everyone else! At least for someone like me whose mental and emotional gongfu is insufficient to deal with the cesspool of modern education. So thanks.

 

Zhuo Ming-Dao,

I wanted to clap for joy upon reading your post. The whole time I was in university I was thinking "this is not an intellectual or educational environment. It is a drone factory" and accumulating ample evidence in favor of this point. And it was one of the most prestigious universities in the midwest. Now for people who don't really care about scholarship or intellectual development (which is most people, who are just putting in their time to get their degree to get their job) this isn't a problem, but for me it was heartbreaking. Intellectual development and scholarship have been the focus of my life since I was six or so, and I have always viewed school as an obstacle to this rather than an aid. By the time I got to college I couldn't take it anymore. I am looking for a good place to go to school where I can develop intellectually and have a good amount of freedom to pursue my interests of pure mathematics and spirituality. Any thoughts? Perhaps we could switch to PMs for this, since it is tangential.

 

I imagine I come across to most people as whiny, self absorbed and unrealistic. I certainly have my share of growing up to do. I just hope these experiences of mine will help someone someday. My intuition tells me they will.

 

-Tyler

[phore]

try framing it differently.

 

instead of this mentality

"im having to put off my spiritual pursuits, in order to scratch claw and bite my way out of a feudal system. I am fighting against the tao attempting to compete for egotistical know-it-alls approval. This is not my future, and i feel as if it is just forcing me to adopt the mentality of scarcity that dominates our society."

 

try this

"Ill just sit here quietly biding my time, while they award me with all sorts of titles and honors. Then when they have dropped their guard, i will be in the perfect position to strike and bring down the system from the inside, using the resources they unwittingly gave me."

 

it appeals to the saboteur archetype and makes everything more fun.

 

look at emperor palpatine: Outwardly he appeared to be just an aging senator. In reality he was a sith lord manipulating events from behind the scenes, to bring down a corrupt and dogmatic theocracy (jedi order).

Edited August 8, 2009 by phore

[Fox]

Fox,

 

This topic is very important to me because I dropped out of college after my freshman year, due to being so utterly miserable at my school that it defied words, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. Not only do we share a name, an interest in Taoism, and a dislike of college, I also am 20, would be a junior if I hadn't dropped out, and have strong roots in Christianity. So it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

 

The conventional replies get a degree of so you can get a better job, the importance of delayed gratification and self-discipline have been repeated to me endlessly and mean as little to me as they always have. So two posts here have made me very happy. Namely,

 

Blasto,

In the United States, the economic, medical, political, and educational systems are all so completely dysfunctional and their dysfunctions are all interlocked together. A conscientious young person looking at the prospect of entering into this system can not help but be repulsed. Of course, society will always have problems and one can't just run away and expect to make spiritual progress. But the sicker the system the more difficult it is to enter into it without detrimental effects, and it is important in such times to emphasize how there are people trying to live a different way. I am certainly guilty of feeling sorry for myself, but there must be a better way than following the conveyor belt like everyone else! At least for someone like me whose mental and emotional gongfu is insufficient to deal with the cesspool of modern education. So thanks.

 

Zhuo Ming-Dao,

I wanted to clap for joy upon reading your post. The whole time I was in university I was thinking "this is not an intellectual or educational environment. It is a drone factory" and accumulating ample evidence in favor of this point. And it was one of the most prestigious universities in the midwest. Now for people who don't really care about scholarship or intellectual development (which is most people, who are just putting in their time to get their degree to get their job) this isn't a problem, but for me it was heartbreaking. Intellectual development and scholarship have been the focus of my life since I was six or so, and I have always viewed school as an obstacle to this rather than an aid. By the time I got to college I couldn't take it anymore. I am looking for a good place to go to school where I can develop intellectually and have a good amount of freedom to pursue my interests of pure mathematics and spirituality. Any thoughts? Perhaps we could switch to PMs for this, since it is tangential.

 

I imagine I come across to most people as whiny, self absorbed and unrealistic. I certainly have my share of growing up to do. I just hope these experiences of mine will help someone someday. My intuition tells me they will.

 

-Tyler

 

Tyler,

 

I too feel a bit in disagreement with the US educational system, which, by the way, was a system taken from Austrian factories, the factories "system" was used to teach their employees the bare essentials quickly so they could better understand their jobs. Quick, easily, mindless jobs.

 

I actually gave a speech in my Speech Comm class on problems with the educational system and used examples from my class in my speech, my teacher was just "out there" and "hip" enough to find it not only amusing, but probably helpful in forming his curriculum.

 

I wrote this when I was so content with my life that I wanted nothing else. I have a beautiful girlfriend, good friends, I am currently jobless but I have done quite a bit of networking where I could get a job working with a local music booking agency or doing some PR work (my major is Music Management/PR and business), and even if I didnt get a job, I was content working at Arbys or somewhere to barely get me by, just because I was that damn happy, I was in the moment through and through, for days.

 

But... Then I started thinking..

 

I want a family.

 

One day in the future, I want a family. I want them to be well off, I want my wife and children and if possible, even my parents, to not have to worry about money.

 

Getting a degree would not only help me, but it would help my future family and friends.

 

I am not miserable in college, I make average to good grades, I have many friends who though I am far different from them they still love and accept my eccentricities, I'm a pretty social guy, and it's a small campus and I'm moderately well liked by those who know me. I am vice president of my fraternity and doing well with my major.

 

But I was just ready to get it over with. The social aspect of it became a popularity contest, though a fraternity is GREAT networking that already has opened many doors for me, it's one big popularity contest. Classes began to get boring.. I have finished my basics and classes for my major are very repetitive (Music Management and a Business minor), and I have job offers NOW that are pretty much the same grade I would get after I graduate..

 

but, then there are the good things, my friends do love me and I love the support they give me, I am involved locally and I am about to mentor a group of youth kids, something I've mentioned on here before, also, I love knowledge and I do take some great classes, plus the independence is always liberating.

 

Your dilemma seems to differ from mine slightly. It seems as if you just haven't found a good environment in which you'd like. I love my campus, it's not too big nor small, and it has great classes and clubs and an amazing music scene. I think you would enjoy a college that you could...enjoy (ha). Find where you fit, as someone mentioned before, a place that is a school but you're okay with it..and you can at least deal with it.

 

Either way, good luck to you.. and as strange as it sounds, the thought of helping OTHERS in my future, really made me want to get back going.

 

Stay true,

 

-Tyler

[Creation]

Tyler,

...

-Tyler

Thank you for your reply.

 

I did not mean to imply that our problems are even remotely similar by pointing out all the things we had in common. Indeed they are quite different.

 

I wasn't even going to post in this thread (too personal) but I had to thank ZMD and Blasto.

 

Best of luck to you in your life and cultivation. Namaste.

[Inedible]

If I had a chance to go back and try again, I would have dropped out of high school, gotten a GED, and then enlisted in the Marines. Book learning comes easily to me, and the people in school are just awful to be around. It isn't that I have something against education; it is just that at the time I was too young to appreciate it. Giving myself a few years in the real world away from my family would have helped put things in order and I would have done much better in college.

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Edited August 9, 2009 by TheSongsofDistantEarth