Have you ever asked yourself what the point of college is? If your answer is “to get a good job,” then you’re here for all the wrong reasons; you’re probably just doing what you’re told. If your answer is “I wanted to be able to screw around for four more years after high school and delay entering the real world,” then you’re probably somewhere closer to the truth.
However, if you are a true intellectual, then you see college not merely as the next step to adulthood or as a four-year vacation, but rather as an opportunity to broaden your mind.
The idea of using college to truly expand your understanding of the world around you is a concept lost on many of my fellow students, who spend so much time trying to fulfill “GenEds” and major requirements that they forget to take classes that will actually teach them something.
I am referring to “Easy A” classes, a name that I find demeaning to both their importance and their difficulty level.
In my three years at Binghamton University, I have taken more “Easy A” classes than anyone I know and I am not ashamed of this. I use knowledge from those classes more in my everyday life than from any history class I have ever taken — and history is my major.
I have taken everything our fine school has to offer for someone with an easy major, from lifeguard training to weight training to actor training, from astronomy to geography to oceanography, from creative writing to stand-up comedy and, of course, zombie literature.
Sure, it may look like I’m wasting my time and money on classes that won’t help me get a career, and perhaps I am, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t learn at least one thing from each of these classes that has changed my life.
Lifeguard training taught me CPR and first-aid skills that are crucial for people to have regardless of their major or their career. Actor training has made watching any movie or television show tremendously more enjoyable, as I can now appreciate even mediocre acting with my first-hand knowledge of how hard it is.
Oceanography enlightened me to a whole other world right here on our planet, while astronomy reminded me of how tiny our planet really is.
If college is truly meant to prepare us for the real world, then an understanding of a multitude of topics is key. The world we are living in is getting smaller and information is constantly at our fingertips. We can use our phones to Google mathematical formulas or historical dates, but it is in this information age that real skills and real understanding of topics are going to play a bigger role than ever.
You can always look up facts and figures that you’ve memorized in college, but it is the “Easy A” classes where you truly learn things that can become part of who you are and give you skills for the future.