Uneducated graduates.
One of the things that I have noticed Rebeca and I have in common is that we both have extremely high standards of performance. “It’s never okay to just do it. You have to do it right.” I find myself admiring this quality in her often because it seems to be rare with other people. We both have slightly different ways of manifesting those standards, but fundamentally I find myself listening to her in avid agreement in regards to her statements about the performance of her classmates. To paraphrase, why don’t these people care whether or not they’re getting A’s or not? This stuff is important; it affects people’s lives. I just couldn’t agree more.
There seems to be a fundamental difference between the way I approach academic activity and the way my classmates do. I actually get teased a lot about it because I stress about getting A’s so much. I always come back to the same thought though. School is just a long drawn-out practice session for a job. Sometimes you don’t get to do exactly what you want when you’re working, but if you choose a profession (major) that you enjoy then you’ll end up doing more of what you want. Classes that aren’t stimulating are like practice for how to handle unappealing work gracefully. When I look at my fellow students, though, I see them treating the entire school experience as a chore to “get through.” I can’t help but wonder whether or not, with today’s rapidly expanding educated workforce, the quality of academic work that students do will end up being more important than the degree itself. I know that if I was an employer right now and hiring a newly graduated student, I would be most interested in what their worst subject is and how well they performed.
