College

College. It is a word that puts fear into our parents the day we are brought into this world and will eventually put a great deal of fear into their little baby the day he or she enters elementary school.

Instead of the usual first day routine of "what is your favorite color?" or "can you tie your shoes yet?" it should be, "so, what college have you decided to go to?"

Earlier and earlier these days the idea of college is instilled into our youth's minds. Yes, trust me, we have pictures of me with the name and mascot of the college that I am presently planning to attend on my bottom, covering my diaper, when I was only a few months old.

It was decided in the early months of my life, which fight song I would be cheering from a football stadium eighteen years later. Even though it was decided early on that college would be my destiny, the question still remains, what is the point of going to college anyway?

Is it trying to live on Ramen noodles and pizza on a fixed budget for four years? Is it honing the ability to stay up for long periods of time and accomplish nothing? Of course it isn't.

We go to college to pursue the things we have decided that we love most in the world and want to make our career.

We leave the nests in which we have been nurtured for eighteen or so years of our natural born life to be enrolled in a crash course that will not only teach us about mechanics, physics, English, or any other such major, but also about reality.

We spend our whole childhood preparing for what comes ahead, for that crash course that seems to come closer with one accident and wreck after the other. Why can't we just live as what we are at the time, a child?

We learn everything from A to Z and from 1 to infinity, but just how much do we use in the real world? Very little my friend, very little.

In high school it seems as though while the goal is the same, the approach is different. This time instead of learning how to tie my shoes, spell my name, and list the founding fathers of this country, I am bombarded with a new set of information.

Now I am expected to know what in heaven's name the things I learn in chemistry are supposed to mean. In the typical school week I can expect to learn anything from the periodic table of elements, to famous quotes from a dead author, to handfuls of new terms in a foreign language, to well - who knows what?

Why do I put up with this? Why continue with this madness? Because all the long hours of constant studying and the thousands of hours of note-taking and pretending to listen to my teachers will eventually pay off.

Hopefully this fall I will be admitted to the college with the name that was imprinted on my bottom as a child. I will become the person who eats Ramen noodles at 2 a.m. as I cram for my next test.

I'll be the one who stands in the stadium singing the fight song that I lovingly learned at the tender age of three.

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