It's been almost 40 years now, but I remember it as if it were yesterday: shedding the ugly rented graduation gown that smelled like a thousand stale strangers and had clung to me like a clammy second skin since we had marched, single file, like blue and white robed prisoners, onto the muggy athletic field that late June evening in 1970; surrendering the mortar board -- (but keeping the tassel to hang on the car mirror until it disintegrated a decade later) -- all in exchange for my hard-earned high school diploma. And back then, so many years ago, it was hard earned. It was then, that night, after sitting in my car outside THE graduation party in town and deciding I didn't belong there either, that I swore off ever setting foot in another classroom, for whatever reason, and vowed I would somehow talk my venerated parents, both college educated, out of making me suffer through another four years of wretched hell. I had had it -- with demeaning teachers, vapid assignments, the squandered time of study hall, stupid cliques of puerile and arrogant classmates, and the politics of sucking up to people in authority who deserved about as much respect as a cockroach.If someone had told me that lonely June night that someday I'd be in front of a classroom, teaching, I'd have thought he was mad. Yet, somehow, after three failed attempts at college, I finally learned that I didn't have to fit in to be successful, that I needed a better reason that parental prodding to attend college, and that, given the right circumstances and the right professors, college could actually be fun. I'll still not set foot in a high school, the land of the damned. They’re even more moronic, smothering, controlling places than they were 40 years ago, and I don't know how people, teachers and students alike, suffer through them or why. But college is, thankfully, not yet high school, and the vast assemblage of philosophies and opinions we call subjects and learning and knowledge is available to almost anyone who is willing to suspend his or her disbelief long enough to work in the land of new ideas and differing opinions.
Those of us who go to college have many reasons for doing so, not the least of which is to get an education. But, in all honesty, a good education can be had just about anywhere, if one applies oneself. At least half the people I know who consider themselves successful have never set foot in a college classroom, or have had minimal contact at best. No, those of us who go to college have something to prove -- generally to ourselves. And many of us want jobs that only come with a diploma in hand. So, we sit in classes -- some exciting, some dry as dirt -- and we write papers, take tests, write more papers, read until our eyes are bloodshot -- and eventually come out with a piece of paper that testifies to the level of our proficiency at some skill or ability we hope someone else will pay us for. And, so too, our culture requires a diploma as testimony to our willingness to corroborate and affirm what our culture currently values. One's diploma is then the penultimate cultural sign that one has digested and regurgitated, to the satisfaction of yet someone else with yet another diploma, what the culture deems meaningful. Whether any of what we learn is of any real worth is up to each of us to decide.
But there's more to attending college than that. In my case at least, by the time I really appreciated college, I was in my thirties. By then, I had gone to technical school and emerged with a certificate as an electronics technician, a skill I would never use. I had worked in radio, in theatre, in retail. I had slaved in a factory, suffered in a warehouse, and sweated in the fields. I had managed a book store, worked in a couple more, and met a string of allegedly famous people in the process. I had sold car parts to shade-tree mechanics, comic books to fanatic collectors, and make-up to drag queens. I had done voice-overs for two-bit local pizza dives and conducted a memorial choir for a beloved friend. After this string of richly absurd but dead end endeavors, it slowly dawned on me that I was spinning my wheels and needed something more than four years of high school Latin and a knack with eyeliner. I just had to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I found a college I liked, and classes I enjoyed.
There are several kinds of college students, but those of us who go to college and remain to teach as professors probably have something genuinely wrong with us. Those of us who choose to teach in the Humanities -- subjects like English, music, philosophy, history, theatre, cultural studies and the like, really need our heads examined. There’s really little to do with such degrees except teach these things to others. That's not bad, it's just an observation. These subjects are certainly just as worthy of our attention as genetics and nuclear physics and political science and mathematics. It's just a sad fact that, in our current culture, subjects like literature and writing and music and art and the study of why humans behave the way they do are considered of little value when compared to medicine and law and finance. What few people outside academia realize is that the humanities are the foundation of learning, and without the curiosity that comes from wanting to know what makes people tick, wanting to understand how humans behave, wanting to know what keeps the world running, there would be no medicine, no law and no finance.
Ultimately, staying in college to teach most likely has something to do with the real world and a pathological desire to avoid it. Most professors would probably deny it, and some probably aren't even self-aware enough to realize it, but the majority of us who remain in college do so because it's a nice, sequestered place to be. It's detached, isolated and insulated. It's nothing like the nine-to-five grind of the real world. Sure, a good many of us put in longer hours than most of our nine-to-five counterparts and none of us will ever see the hefty paychecks some of our successful athletic students will see. But we have an abundant environment constantly infused with new ideas. We have an interesting variety of idiosyncratic students every semester. We often spend countless hours amongst ourselves, indulging one another's peculiarities and taking delight in bitching about the state of the world. And those who get tenure usually end up with a nice pay check, some good benefits and pretty nice vacations. Then again, those of us who are adjuncts are probably the least balanced of all, as we get none of the perks, but we also probably have the most fun because, like the system that employs us, and unlike our tenured counterparts, we don't take ourselves too seriously.
If I sound a bit cynical I suppose I am. College isn't just a place to get grades and a place to net a diploma. (I'd say earn, but grade inflation and the bottom-line philosophy are driving colleges swiftly in the direction of high schools, where self-esteem is more important that self-knowledge and world awareness.) College is, ideally, a place to expand one's apprehension and appreciation of the world and its multitude of cultures and experiences. It's a place to challenge one's assumptions, to learn new and often provocative things and to engage one's brain in something more profound than video games and Monday night football. College is, for many of us who stay, a refuge from the banality and stupidity of life "out there." In college, thinking and questioning and debating and wondering are all indispensable things the world seems to be leaving behind. That's what I found in college. That's why I stayed. And that's why I taught.
