The End is Finally Here

Well it finally happened. The last day of school for (hopefully) the rest of my life has come and gone. Now I've promised some people that this entry would be the longest I ever write and I will stay true to that. After I talk a little about my final last night, I'm going to reflect a little and give some thoughts about my whole school experience. Well my last final of course had to suck. We had been given a practice test and some vocab to study but of course the final had to include problems that were not remotely similar to the ones on the practice test and so I found myself completely unprepared for a few problems. I was really hoping to get 100% on this test and I thought I had studied well and that I'd be done in an hour. Boy was I wrong. It ended up taking me almost the whole 2 hours. I felt OK about it but not 100% OK. Grades have to be submitted by May 5th so sometime that week I'll be able to go online and check out my grades. So I will be anxiously awaiting the posting of those. Now my thoughts on school. Overall it has been a good experience. I have sacrificed a lot of time, energy, and sleep and worked my butt off to do the best that I possibly could. The sacrifice part was increased a great deal after the boys were born and we had to deal with Kyle's health problems. It was very hard to concentrate on school when all I could think about was Kyle and Fernanda at the hospital and if Keith was receiving proper attention while he bounced around from relative to relative. Amazingly enough I never got below a B- which I consider a huge accomplishment considering all that we were going through. Fernanda has been a great source of strength and inspiration for me and my graduation is as much a result of her hard work as it is my own. I haven't been able to be with my dear wife and kids nowhere near as much as I would have liked to and it was very hard to be away from them and very tiring to be away from home as much as I have. I fought through it all, however, and I feel a great feeling of accomplishment. I look forward to being able to accept a new position and have more responsibility at work and the raise that comes with it. I have definitely earned every penny. Like I said earlier, the overall school experience has been a good one. I've met a lot of good people and enjoyed getting to know them a little and spending time in class with them. I've had some good professors and I've had some bad ones. I don't want to sugar coat this for anyone though, school is hard and its not a lot of fun, but it is necessary and anyone who attends college should pursue their education and at least receive a 4 year degree. My main problem with college and universities is this notion that they try to dump on us that "we chose to come to college so that we could become well-rounded individuals." This is especially emphasized by the teachers at liberal arts colleges such as Westminster where I am graduating from. Well that's the biggest bunch of crap that I've ever heard. Nobody goes to college to become a well-rounded individual, we go to college to pursue our degree in the field we have chosen. The classes that make us "well-rounded" individuals are forced upon us as electives by the college. I am so sick of science, art, and English that I want to scream. By having to take 2 science classes, an art class, and 2 English classes, those classes alone delayed me being graduated by almost 2 full semesters!! Now you throw in my transfer classes that I had to retake, cost accounting and public speaking, and you have a total of 7 classes that really were not necessary for me to take and I really could have been graduating last year and already have a year of accounting experience in the workforce under my belt. Schools really need to soften their stance on transfers and just let these students come over and continue their education instead of holding them back because "you don't know if the class taught at the other school is up to par with the course taught at your school." Also, the only reason that electives exist at colleges is so that the college can drag out your education so they can make more money. The two sciences classes I took, "biology" and "physics" were basically the same exact class. They basically taught use to take more care of the environment. I think the college should at least make that into one class and call it Environment 101 or something like that. I also think that if the college insists that we take electives, the electives should be classes of the students choice, not subjects forced upon us by the college. That way the student can take a class they enjoy and be able to concentrate on our majors. I would have loved to have just taken all the business and accounting classes which pertain to my accounting major and been able to take an environment 101 class and then Spanish classes every year so that I can improve my Spanish which is something that could help me greatly in the business arena. That would have been much more beneficial to me and my career instead of wasting away in art and science classes and retaking classes whose credits were not accepted when I transferred over. Instead, colleges forget about the students needs and concentrate on making money, and try giving us guilt trips in classes to brainwash us into believing that we're there because we wanted to be well rounded. What the hell was I doing in elementary, junior high, and high school? Picking my nose? Do the things we learned there not count for anything? People go to college to get a degree in the area of expertise they wish to specialize in so they can advance in that field at a faster rate. So to all you colleges and universities out there, spare me your speeches, and admit the truth; the love of money long ago overtook the love of educating young people. Higher education is big business, the students know that because they're not stupid; that's why they're in college. Praise almighty heaven I don't have to worry about this anymore, at least for myself, and to all you students out there, keep fighting a good fight, and hand in there until you at least get that 4 year degree. Despite all my ranting and raving, you'll be glad you did.