Five and a half years
of post secondary education studying philosophy and religious studies at the
University of Lethbridge is over. School
has been the only life I have ever known, but my career in formal education is
now officially finished. For the first
time in my life, I have no plans. Every
moment of my life prior to this has had a calendar date circled or deadline on
the horizon. From my first day of kindergarten until now has been one
long continuous period of life. For the first time ever I have nothing
ahead of me. My whole life has been planned up to December 2013. Without any real direction leaving
university, I would like to reflect on this time of my life.
My one piece of
advice coming out of this experience is that if you don’t know exactly what you
want out of life, don’t go to
university. Five and a half years of this strange reality has shown me a
few things. Five and a half years has left me with a bit of confusion and
regret. While it doesn’t feel like a
total waste, it doesn’t feel worth the time and money I spent.
I certainly took a
lot of positive things from university.
I learned so much in and out of class.
I found that I love to talk about ideas.
I found a passion for writing. I
met some amazing people and did a lot of maturing. But on the whole, I feel university probably
wasn’t necessary to discover those things.
I probably could have found a less time and money consuming place to
find myself.
I didn’t know
what I wanted out of life when I graduated high school. I entered
university with a sense of “well this is what I should be doing”. I never really asked myself about how I
was going to live my life as I wanted it. Instead I looked to authority
figures (teachers, parents, employers ect.) to indirectly ask what they wanted
out of my life. I’ve now learned that the only person you can ask what
you want to do with your life is yourself.
Parents want what is
best for their children so long as they have the lowest chance of failure.
For parents, University is the safest route for their children with no
particular direction. Such was the case
with me. I was lucky enough to have had parents
who saved money for my post secondary education. So, university looked like a good enough
option for me; at least I could focus on subjects I had some interest in. Maybe it was the sub-par, small town schooling
that held me back, but I felt incredibly mediocre. I never excelled or had much passion for anything. School had always made me feel stupid.
Did I really know why I was going to
university? I’m not sure that I did. Certainly, my first university
year was a necessary social rite of passage. The schoolwork was secondary
to the rollercoaster socialization process that consumed my life during that
time. But after that year, there wasn’t much difference in what my
friends and I did. The following five years now seem to melt together in
my memory. It’s hard to differentiate the years apart. I stayed
with the same friends and did the same things with them. I absolutely cherish those time and people I
was with, but there was definitely a routine that was repeated over and
over. There comes a point in time where
routine becomes stagnant.
It wasn’t until the
past year that I felt like I knew the direction of the path that was meant for
me. It was then when I realized that university was probably not the
best use of mine or my parent’s money. I know there are other people who
are in university who know exactly why they're there. They have a real
goal and are spending their hard earned dollars to attend class and earn their
degree they want. People go to
university to become doctors, business people, lawyers, teachers and so on. Knowing that these people exist, I feel
unworthy to be spending money that I didn’t really earn to get a degree that I
didn’t really want. Over the past summer I
really felt compelled not to go back to school to finish my degree in September.
It just didn’t feel right to go back. But it also didn’t feel right
to leave a degree 90% finished.
For the majority of my university career I was just going through the motions. As if I was coasting through everything. My grades were never a concern. As long as my GPA was high enough to graduate, I didn’t care much about marks. I feel like I’ve spent too much of this valuable time, waiting. I graduated high school with a sense of excitement. This was a chance to get out of this dead-end town and meet new people. A chance to start over with a blank slate where I can become the type of person I always dreamed of being. The things that I never did in high school would now happen. I would no longer be defined by who I was in the past. It felt like my real life was about to begin.
That was my mistake,
not realizing my life began when I was born.
All this time was spent waiting for the next step to begin. My
high school life felt like I was killing time, waiting for graduation. My
whole time in University I felt like I was waiting for something. As if
by virtue of simply being a university student, all the things I expected to
happen were going to fall into my lap. I was waiting for love to
happen. I was expecting a social
education in growing up. I wanted to
know the highs and lows of being in a relationship. For the most part my mind seemed to be
focused on extracurricular events. But I
never really took control and was honest with myself. I just waited.