College Was A Complete Waste Of My Time

College was a waste of my time. I say this with uttermost regret, because I spent four years of my life wandering around a place that stripped me off of my individuality, my creative faculties, my preferences, my hobbies and which left me in full brazen display to the corporate world with nothing else but my paper diploma to cover myself with.

So, what the hell am I complaining about? I’ll tell you, but first let me ask you: How do you like being controlled? How do you like being told what to do without being given a choice?

Well, the colleges of today are doing exactly that. Practicing free-thinking is considered a sin. Colleges give us a limited view of the world. Very limited. Education goes synonymously with duplicating the professor’s lessons in the answer scripts and scoring the highest grades.

Education goes synonymously with pursuing the “highest-paying” job the market is offering. And after slogging our way through college and landing a job with a handsome pay, we tell ourselves we are happy.

We are not fucking happy.

It’s an illusion, a farce. We labor under the illusion that we are satisfied, which is nothing but a side-effect of bad television and social media. This society, which keeps hurling countless clichés at us, leads us to believe that a college degree and a well-paying job is the be all and end all of life. But is it really?

Deconstructing is the need of the hour. Knowing who we are as a person — knowing our truest, rawest self is a good way to start. Not once do we ask ourselves, “Who am I?” or “Why am I doing what I’m doing?”

If we go about retrospecting who we have been our entire life, we find out that we have never been just one person. You are your father who wants you to become a surgeon, your brother who plays in a band, your girlfriend who’s sure as hell you are a loser. You are the quote that dropped in your Facebook feed, the last novel you read, and so on and so forth.

Take a moment and detach yourself from all these people, these ideas, and these influences.

Now you are just you as you were born. Now think what you’d do differently. You immediately find that you have a clearer picture of the world in front of you. All this while you were in the back seat, now you are steering the car.

Imagine you are on a mission, a mission to find out who you are, what makes you truly happy, and how can you deliver real value to the world. So, how do you go about finishing the mission or at least strategizing your moves?

Firstly, by knowing what matters most. My family, my loved ones, and my close friends matter most to me, because they are the people I can count on. Nobody else.

Then comes the real deal. It is to know what you truly want from life. If you still feel that a job and a job only will give you ultimate contentment, go about it. If you still feel that only a rigorous college curriculum, a back-dated education model serves your truest needs, by all means, go about it. At least, now you are deciding for yourself.

But, if you decide otherwise, if you decide that your job can’t be your identity, that gaining a flashy college degree isn’t the only way to fill your tummy, then you have my respect.

I’m not discouraging you from going to college. Go to college. Earn a degree. But look at your degree as something which will help you along the way, not something which will shape your entire future.

Remember always: You decide. Not the society, not the government, not the law. But, you and you only. You have complete power over your life. Don’t get played.