College is for Rich People
May. 24th, 2008 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losThe other day when I drunkenly said the graduation speech was bourgeois--and made everyone roll their eyes, I'm sure (hey, I would have)--I meant that the kid selected to give the speech said something along the lines of 'Education is important in America, and that's one of the great things about the country. Without a college education you're doomed to a life of low-paying menial jobs." And I was like, um, pardon me, not only is that not correct, how many parents and friends in the audience do not themselves have a college education? What a priviliged, insensitive thing to say.
And then he compounded his annoyance quotient by making some joke about the days of blithely charging everything to our U-Bill to have mom and dad pay being over. ...yeah, I LOVE how we're universally upper class WASPS from the Chicago area. I have at times worked as many as three jobs simultaneously to get myself through college with adequate funds for books and food. And I'm rich. We may be floundering with the real estate crisis, and it's hard to define 'rich' in America given the existence of the super-rich a la My Super Sweet Sixteen, but I mean it in the sense that my mom could pay my tuition, and did. I don't have loans. But what about, just for example, those of my friends who're leaving college deeply indebted and don't need reminded at their commencement that as hard as financial survival during college has been, the next ten years will be a frantic scramble to pay off the ludicrous over-burdensome costs of an education as increasingly necessary to economic survival (which I believe is what the kid was hinting at) as it is increasingly expensive?
Perhaps I'm over-reacting to a relatively blase comment, but this does seem to be rather a leitmotif of my college experience. It's that kind of blatant, unforgivable ignorance as to others economic realities that made Meg's book history prof insist that she buy and bring into class costly books like House of Leaves and three versions of the same book, among other things, on TOP of a looooong syllabus, just to glance at the introductions and pass on to the next week's round of accquisitons, unable to grasp that on a slow tip day that edition of House of Leaves is approx. 5 hours of work (36$ without shipping costs). In typical professor fashion he didn't tell them how limited his purpose in having them obtain said text was until he'd made them go get it, and people who might otherwise have blown him off went out and bought the thing. And I'm sure that the self-satisfied liberalism of Iowa City is such a cozy cocoon that he didn't once think about whether what he wanted was necessary. Whether that introduction, which he might well have xeroxed or made over-heads of, was worth 5 hours of an already strained life.
I know to buy books online if given adequate time in which to do so, to live in the library, I know to constantly hunt used bookstores and to double-think the request every time a Prof tells me to buy things: but I shouldn't have to police my Professors as to courtesy. An educated American adult in a position of responsibility over young people should have a better basic grasp of their situation. And the problem had better be one of thinking decisions through than apathy, or some ivory-tower self-contented 'well, you should have to suffer for your education, and if you really cared about the ideal of personal development, if you gave a crap about knowledge, you wouldn't fuss.' Yeah, *eyeroll* go read Jude the Obscure about it. I think people who say that haven't been hungry.
And then he compounded his annoyance quotient by making some joke about the days of blithely charging everything to our U-Bill to have mom and dad pay being over. ...yeah, I LOVE how we're universally upper class WASPS from the Chicago area. I have at times worked as many as three jobs simultaneously to get myself through college with adequate funds for books and food. And I'm rich. We may be floundering with the real estate crisis, and it's hard to define 'rich' in America given the existence of the super-rich a la My Super Sweet Sixteen, but I mean it in the sense that my mom could pay my tuition, and did. I don't have loans. But what about, just for example, those of my friends who're leaving college deeply indebted and don't need reminded at their commencement that as hard as financial survival during college has been, the next ten years will be a frantic scramble to pay off the ludicrous over-burdensome costs of an education as increasingly necessary to economic survival (which I believe is what the kid was hinting at) as it is increasingly expensive?
Perhaps I'm over-reacting to a relatively blase comment, but this does seem to be rather a leitmotif of my college experience. It's that kind of blatant, unforgivable ignorance as to others economic realities that made Meg's book history prof insist that she buy and bring into class costly books like House of Leaves and three versions of the same book, among other things, on TOP of a looooong syllabus, just to glance at the introductions and pass on to the next week's round of accquisitons, unable to grasp that on a slow tip day that edition of House of Leaves is approx. 5 hours of work (36$ without shipping costs). In typical professor fashion he didn't tell them how limited his purpose in having them obtain said text was until he'd made them go get it, and people who might otherwise have blown him off went out and bought the thing. And I'm sure that the self-satisfied liberalism of Iowa City is such a cozy cocoon that he didn't once think about whether what he wanted was necessary. Whether that introduction, which he might well have xeroxed or made over-heads of, was worth 5 hours of an already strained life.
I know to buy books online if given adequate time in which to do so, to live in the library, I know to constantly hunt used bookstores and to double-think the request every time a Prof tells me to buy things: but I shouldn't have to police my Professors as to courtesy. An educated American adult in a position of responsibility over young people should have a better basic grasp of their situation. And the problem had better be one of thinking decisions through than apathy, or some ivory-tower self-contented 'well, you should have to suffer for your education, and if you really cared about the ideal of personal development, if you gave a crap about knowledge, you wouldn't fuss.' Yeah, *eyeroll* go read Jude the Obscure about it. I think people who say that haven't been hungry.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 03:10 pm (UTC)Also, I would've smacked that guy upside the head - I can do without the reminders that I'm graduating $50,000 in debt with a completely useless degree, thanks!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 06:18 pm (UTC)Of course, this is the girl who doesn't care about her grades because her dad's the ex-superintendent of stl public and will get her a job no matter what, but bleehhh to classism.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 06:27 pm (UTC)Also hey, guess what I just requested over at
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Date: 2008-05-24 06:32 pm (UTC)What IS that impulse Universities get to find the most exasperating, nominally intelligent yet surprisingly foot-in-mouth-prone child they have, complete with the sense of humor of a dead tree, and make it talk at everyone for twenty minutes? Said kid is always engaged in volunteer work: but never interesting volunteer work, just like, a youth group or something. And it's typically not the valedictorian, just Some Kid for whom this will be the most impressive thing they ever do? Is THAT it? Some impulse of pity, causing me to be bored and turn up the ipod I've hidden in my boobs louder?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 12:59 am (UTC)the nice thing i have to say about the truman student body is that since virtually EVERYONE is hemorrhaging cash or is trying to start anew with all of their cash hemorrhaged from the get-go in the effort to pay off tuition bills for four(+) years, that kind of insensitive merry-making is not very well received. In short, everybody wore headphones, literally or figuratively.
iryna and some other people and i played telephone, at least.