Is College Ruined?

  College is stressful. The amount of work, trying to make new friends, and exams are a lot. It’s a lot especially when you have a question hanging over your head that everyone always asks themselves. What do I want to do? This question can become overwhelming in a college student's life, mainly when the student doesn’t know what they want to do. This is seen in the article written by Isabella Glassman, “Careerism is Ruining College”. Similarly for her, she didn’t know what she wanted to do, and was extremely overwhelmed when she had no idea what was being talked about while the people around her were talking about internships and vocabulary she didn’t understand. Glassman is talking about careerism, and how colleges are shoving it down our throats. Personally, I don’t think it is ruining college because it is very important to wither what you want to do down to a few things when you get older, but I do see how it is very stressful for a student to handle. In her article, Glassman states, “Almost two-thirds of college students have reported feeling “overwhelmed anxiety” within a given year, and experts have pointed to coursework, pressure for extracurricular activities, and concerns over choosing a career as causes” (Glassman, 4). Students already feel a lot of pressure from parents and feel unprepared for the future, so they don’t need to feel the mass amounts of pressure college puts on it. Colleges tend to overbear students with internships and asking questions about your career. I’m a freshman and I’m in a class that is already trying to map my whole life out for me with a project. This can also be seen as controlling, which brings me back to Freire’s banking concept. Freire states “The teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it.” (Freire, 88). Students may feel rushed by colleges in making their decision on their career. It may feel like they are doing what is suggested instead of what their dream or what they want to do. Instead, colleges can start “recruiting systems to prevent finance and consulting firms from pushing students to commit earlier and earlier.”(Glassman, 4). Doing this can help so many students take a deep breath and get to think about their career over time instead of being forced to rush the process and doing something that doesn’t make them as happy as they can be. Doing this and many more things can make a college campus more lively, and create a more problem-posing environment for students to take on the dreadful question.