Independence

With graduation comes a sense of accomplishment, relief, or even anticipation. Many people claim that graduation marks the transition into the "real world", but this is often patronizing younger generations as if they have been sheltered all their lives. Of course, I know plenty of people who have graduated and still believe the world revolves around them. No, graduation doesn't inherently MEAN anything -- at least not to me.

Those little pieces of paper that my dean signed say little about my education. Together, they only attest to a fraction of my college experience. Most of my peers sought out degrees to flash in front of employers; they sought professors who would make the journey easy; they sought tactics that would earn a 4.0 GPA on paper without having done any independent work. Not to blow my own horn, but I would rather fail a class than cheat; I would rather have high grade point TOTAL than AVERAGE; I would rather take classes I'm BAD AT than finish a semester on the dean's list. To me, college was a time to learn something, not a time to impress people on paper. If you were to include the classes I audited, I have around 230 undergraduate credit hours compared to the 130 required for my combined degrees.

But then, graduation means the same as dropping out. It isn't an accomplishment -- it's a transition. Is it independence? Not usually. The government is running out of funding for benefit programs, so our generation has to start saving for retirement as early as possible. We are slaves to money, which makes us slaves to our jobs, slaves to responsibility... which isn't always so bad if you don't mind being a slave. American sentiments make this difficult to accept.

I read in "Polite Fictions" that Americans push independence culturally, whereas Japanese push interdependence. Why would Americans not want to belong to something greater? The military makes soldiers proud to belong, and children everywhere hate feeling outcast... so how is it we as Americans dream of independence knowing quite well it is unattainable in any industrial society? The closer together we all become, the greater the appeal to fantasy games that appeal to the need for independence. I'm losing focus on what my point was at this late hour, but to me, independence is the great joy of being out of school... and unemployed. v_v

In any case, I have purchased a domain name to celebrate my independence. I have also (as you may have noticed) redesigned the site. It's all hand-coded, so I hope to get some feedback. Keep your eyes peeled at crockettquest.com for future updates!