It used to be that success was not necessarily defined by the education behind an individual. In the 1980's and 1990's it was apparent that the opposite was becoming true; if you wanted a secure and well paying job, you went to school, and, of course, if you wanted to go through trade school to learn how a specific trade, there was always that option.
Now it is 2013 and Haley and I are sitting here willing ourselves through the graduate school application process. It's just as tedious, if not more-so, than the undergraduate process, and the monotony is admittedly killing me as it is many of those whom I know are subjecting themselves to the same thing. I ask myself, "why not give up? Why not just get a job and work towards a lifelong career like Hitchens did?"
The United States Department of Labor states that in 2012 employment tenure was at an average of 4.6 years which means the average working adult will have between seven to ten (7-10) jobs in their lifetime. We can see, already, the disincentive of dropping straight into the work force. After all, even if education serves less of a purpose in obtaining success, if I stay in school for the next two to five years, maybe I'll only have to subject myself to between four and seven separate careers instead of up to ten.
But why is it now so hard to find a career to enjoy? For example, it's now been roughly sixty six days since I graduated from college and I am still unemployed. Taking winter breaks into consideration as well as not having moved into a new apartment until the beginning of January, we can chalk it up to a solid two months of hunting jobs. The jobs I've been avoiding are fast food service, cashier attendance, restaurant service, and the like, but it appears that what I have been avoiding is going to be my only option, in the end, when one of us can no longer carry both. But I digress.
Back to the issue of "why education?" As I said, trade jobs used to be highly popular before the turn of the century. We could even say that trade jobs are the sole reason (ahead of education) why this country is as great as it is, but as we see less and less people going into trade to live with a job they love, we see society brooding more and more about a monotony in life.
Yes, I did refer to the graduate application process as monotonous, but it's not exactly the same thing. This type of discouragement is temporary; eventually the applicant receives word back from the institutions he or she applies to and chooses the best option (even if it is applying again for the next semester). The type of discouragement in society to which I refer is not temporary; it is permanent, perpetual, and it forces those who are stuck in it to indoctrinate themselves with new reality.
Thus, the new age of education is in selflessness. Yes, one could pursue education merely to put off the horrors of "the real world", but the proper function of education nowadays is to attempt changing the way the world works, to making the "dream" something that can actually be realized. Some of us are making this attempt in writing, art, theatre, business, and by becoming an educator, but I am making this attempt in politics and hopefully journalism because the struggle is, ultimately, convincing people not only that change should come, but that it can and it takes individual effort and cooperation— the same individual effort and cooperation that created this great country.
~Joe
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