Bright College Days

The other day, I read some idiotic posts from the LiveJournal community dedicated to bethje's school, and it got me thinking back to my own college experience. Overall, I guess I was kind of lucky. I was in the first class of the Honors College at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (dumb name, I know), and I think it worked to my advantage that the whole thing hadn't been totally organized yet. I actually think I might have ended up having an easier time of it than if I had taken non-honors courses for my basic requirements. I remember talking to people who were sophomores and freshmen when I was a senior, and the classes already seemed to have gotten much harder.

The majority of the Honors College lived in the same dorm, and I think that helped me with socialization, since I knew most of the people there from the honors classes. It was probably the time of my life when I was the most sociable. That's a very relative thing, of course, and I still had a lot of social anxieties. It was rare when I was comfortable enough with someone to actually seek out their company. More often, I would just talk to people when I ran into them. Still, I probably wouldn't even have done that if I had lived in one of the non-honors dorms. I know there were some charges of the people in the honors dorm being elitists, but I always thought that was based on ignorance. Being insular doesn't necessarily imply elitism. And, of course, not everyone in the dorm was insular. I was, but that's my way.

Since I lived in a specialty dorm, it was rare that they would move in new students in the middle of the school year. I somehow managed to scare away three out of my four roommates, and every time I ended up with a double all to myself. That was lucky for me, but I do have to wonder if I was really that horrible to live with.

One part of the college experience that I never, well, experienced was that of going to parties and getting drunk. I DID go to a party where some people got drunk and thought "couscous" was the funniest word ever, but it was at a professor's house. I never attended the stereotypical college party, where kids drank three times their own volume in beer, and the cops had to break it up. I never wanted to, either. In fact, college turned me off of alcohol, since I associated it with rowdy parties. I'm not as much against it now, because I've since met people who could drink without being rowdy. That's not to say I don't still realize that drunkenness and alcoholism are serious problems, or that I drink at all regularly now; but I don't mind alcohol in general as much as I did back then, and I'll drink an alcoholic beverage on occasion.

A somewhat unrelated thought I have about college is that it's largely become an institution. It's no longer a place for those interested in further scholarly pursuits, but sort of a second high school for young adults (meant in the literal sense in that they're people who just became adults, not in the way book publishers use the term). I never really thought of college as something I had much of a choice in doing, and I think that's a common idea nowadays. People say they go to college to get a good job, but, while that might still be the case for those studying in certain fields, so many people have college degrees and jobs that they could have gotten with a high school education or less, if they have jobs at all. After I graduated, my first three jobs were at a toy store, a frame store, and Kmart. College isn't the only factor in this, I'm sure. I understand that the economy is horrible, and I'm not all that aggressive in pursuing work. I don't really think I should have to be, but that's a different topic altogether. I do think, however, that college degrees are becoming progressively less valuable.