Time of Your Life
My brother just completed secondary school and was scouting for colleges to enroll in. So, before anyone jumped the gun, I talked to both my parents and my brother to consider taking a year off and not rush into college. I felt that it was the best thing he could possibly do at that time to grow as a person. Because going for classes, handing in assignments and sitting for exam doesn't do that for you.
I've noticed through experience that the majority of college students lack the maturity and exposure to truly survive and thrive in school. It's odd really, seeing seemingly adult students not wearing uniforms but reflecting the image and way of thinking that of a secondary school kid. I thought to myself that something has got to be wrong somewhere when there is such an alarming number of cases like these. Isn't it odd when you know that so many of your friends and friends of friends have absolutely no idea what they're doing and where they're heading to? That most of them have no clue as to what they want out of life?
The root of the problem stems from the educational system, upbringing and culture. Our system teaches us to memorize facts, not think. Our system tells us what to do, not question why. Our system spoon feeds us, not to be proactive. And as a result the factories of substance-less so-called educational institutions of lacklustre quality produces clueless robots. How else do you explain the high unemployment rate among fresh graduates? How else do you explain the lack of human capital? How else do you explain highly skilled workers exporting their talents and trades overseas?
All these questions do not need any answer. It's been lying bare naked on the ground unnoticed and unquestioned for far too long. Queries need to be poked at to seek solutions to this pathetic epidemic. Changing a system that has been set in stone for decades is a pretty daunting task, to say the least. But there is always a way out, through, and over the problem. Which brings me back to the dialogue I had with my parents and my brother; to take a year off.
I remember how school was like. It was a safe, comfortable and fun environment. Despite being a curious reader of everything under the sun, I wasn't aware of anything much aside from that cocoon called adolescence. What you know or read or listen about is of no comparison to what you go through and learn and experience. College and university on the other hand is an entirely new, independent and free terrain. In that place we get to meet people from all walks of life and we're exposed to many, many more things, in the most general sense of the word. There is just such a big disparity of experiences between secondary school and university. Diving head first without adequate preparation can be pretty disastrous.
Which is exactly why one too many students struggle during their college and university years. Simply because they didn't bridge that gap. It was a leap too soon, too rash, and too hasty. Taking time off gives an opportunity for those pimpled-face kids to put one foot in the real world, experience new things, meet new people, learn and be exposed to things they never thought even existed. Even a number of Ivy League universities in the States, including Yale, have proposed to give prospective students one year off before they enroll in their first year.
There's that time, that once in a lifetime chance, for them to do whatever the hell they feel like doing. Work, volunteer, travel, anything is possible. It's a time that they can afford to make mistakes, and learn from it themselves without getting an hour long lecture from the parental unit, without getting detention, without others telling and instructing them what's the right thing to do. It would be the first time in their lives that they experience what it feels like to be an adult, to be your very own person.
The world being as competitive as it is propels parents to push their kids through education as fast as possible and graduate as quick as possible with as many As as possible so they can kick start their career at as young of an age as possible. There's too many that have and are partaking in this ridiculous rat race to which the majority of the herd losses their way half of the time and the winners end up being a very vague (and sometimes pure lucky) minority. Which begs the question; has that always been the formula to success? If you say yes, I strongly suggest you slap yourself and forget whatever you've read because clueless robots suck.
If doing what's "normal" proves to be a path to success, then we would still be a non-Federated land under the imperial rule of the British, Islam would have never made it as a recognised religion, and we'd be at least a few hundred years behind because countless of other would've-been creators, innovators, revolutionaries, movers and shakers didn't take that road less taken, didn't thought outside of the box, and didn't go against the grain of order.
