Forest Gump once said " life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get". This comment, although somewhat cheesy sounding can not be any more closely tied to reality itself. Ever since birth my parents had my life figured out, I was meant to act proper and live up to my name and status back in Bogota, Colombia. Fast forward nineteen years and i'm here in America for a few reasons really, but if I ask my mom to this day,she will always say the same thing she told me when I was young. My mom told me that I had a better chance living out my dreams in the United States. Although it didn't make sense when I was young, I understand now what she meant by that, it was always her preparing me for a future better than her own.
This week,I was told to read and analyze three different viewpoints over what other people think of a college education. I read them all as expected of me and I can honestly say that I agreed with parts of all of them and disagreed as well. One article that I disagreed with the most was the article by Caroline Bird, titled College Waste. Caroline's sincere opinion is mostly her talking poorly of a college education. It occurred to me when reading her article to search her up on google, and turns out this famous writer went to Oxford University, seems to me that her schooling at the well known Oxford University did not leave her all too happy.
If Caroline went to Oxford and her article goes against attending college there must be some confusion in her part on how she views an education. Contradiction is not a writer's strongest suit at all. Following her article, I read the article by William Zinsser labeled College Pressures, written in 1978 his article was a delightful read and mentioned some of the struggles that college students face. His article was one of my personal favorites, Zinsser mentions a lot of good points such as having to please your parents while also finishing your assignments on time and trying to figure out your path while your peers are going through different career paths. His article seemed to reach out to the majority who go through some of those struggles and it seemed the most realistic.
The last article was also a critique but not so much towards colleges, What true education should do written by Sidney Harris, was definitely headed down the right direction pointing out the fast paced classes that colleges offer. She tells readers that the brain although resilient and a powerful storage place, is not capable of long term retention of any important material when all college students seem to do is study with a limited amount of time in between before you move onto the next subject. Her opinion was quite true when one truly thinks about it, some students attend college for four years and hope to make it forward onto a job but when your memory is put to the test most of the retained information disappears into a black hole in your mind. If anything the article written by her should be studied by all professors and maybe we can take into account what is wrong with education and try to fix it. Of all the articles this one was the most intriguing and possibly my favorite; all articles overall were written in the 70's and its safe to say that each opinion is valid if not somewhat close related to today's schooling.
