I will be pretty disappointed in myself if my four-year college education ends with me sitting in an office cubicle for 40 hours a week.
I think maturing is realizing that capitalism is an inevitable destination and that “corporate America” is a trap that university career centers attempt to dress up, particularly in job placement rates.
All we know from the job placement rates is the percentage of students who are employed. Not the percentage of students who are slaves to capitalism and love it or those who are slaves to capitalism and hate it.
As I continue to write stories in journalism courses at Lehigh, there always seems to be some motive to gain profit or some exploitation of a source in the subtext. I can’t read or write about an issue without using my “real world” knowledge, and it ruins the principle of every great story.
There are a lot of jobs that don’t use an office space and can still offer a 401(k) without gluing you to a desk chair for eight hours a day. Considering our advancing age of technology, computers will almost always be a quintessential part of the workplace.
The concept of devoting myself to a full-time job and praying for the weekend sounds like a prison.
Maybe it’s our generation that is trying to raise a revolution against capitalism — and that is why college campuses are so dangerous. It’s almost utopic if you think about it. Everyone is desperate to support you and incubate your ideas. You have opportunities at your fingertips, and all you have to do is read a flyer and walk into a building.
My participation in the career fair strengthened my fear of corporate America. While networking is fun and essential, I didn’t need that glimpse of my future as a sophomore. Fast forward to senior year and I’ll probably be selling myself into the labor market and caroling my elevator pitches.
I can assume that most college students have a fear of corporate America and growing up. It’s unfortunate that all of these creative outbursts and academic and social revolutions have an expiration date.
The world may be your oyster, but college is the oyster for students. Whenever a student has an idea, a thought, a research interest or even a desire to start a conversation, professors and administrators are excited to celebrate their achievements with them.
Every student is this extremely valued person who might change the world. Every small achievement is celebrated, every bad day is redirected toward getting help, every thought is promised potential and every student is a prodigy. Higher education wants to build up our ego and confidence in exchange for about $200,000.
Then, you graduate.
You’re attention deprived. You’re not as important anymore. Your boss probably won’t be at their feet begging you to change the world.
A lot of people go to college to study important things and secure a job where they can make a lot of money. The story goes that students are first young and innocent with interesting ideas, and then they take headshots and create a Linkedin account. Then, corporate America seeps into our summers with fancy internships in a city on the 60th floor of some glass building.
The college environment feels much more like an anarchy. I can show up to class in pajamas, I can wage my opinion against the professor and I have equal access to resources. In corporate America, on the other hand, you are asked to dress professionally for 40 hours a week, and it is recommended that you don’t talk back to your boss. You are now working in a more hierarchical environment.
Although this is one of those “it is what it is” situations, I want to write and travel and be curious and interesting without worrying about finding a high-salary job that binds me to this bleak bureaucracy. Corporate America is asking me to give up autonomy over my interests, and entrepreneurship is apparently my one and only escape out of this thing.
So, I am frustrated that entering the real world is inevitable and that I might have to struggle to escape this fate. The transition from college to the real world is pretty degenerative. You go from being treated as this talented individual for four years, to compromising your happiness for retirement security that’s being earned by your relationship with your computer.
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2 Comments
Your idealism is scary from the perspective that you blame capitalism based upon some perceived lack of understanding of the opportunities that abound for you as a result of your Lehigh degree.
Probably you are at Lehigh because someone in your family achieved some level of success thru Capitalism that got you a good education. Now you have been indoctrinated & pampered at Lehigh and have some expectation that there is a better option than capitalism where you will have to motivate yourself to get a job & earn a living to sustain your high level of leisure.
Perhaps you should go to a communist country to put some perspective on the freedom of choice you have here under the Capitalist system in America.
In America you have a choice of your career either behind a computer screen or interacting with people as a profession. You don’t have that choice in many other countries where the government decides your future.
Hopefully you mature in the next 2 years & get ready to leave the Lehigh womb!!
Dear Bruce,
I must applaud your commentary on my edit desk. I usually don’t respond to comments on any of my work, but I felt especially compelled to reply.
It is clear that you and I have different values, and I respect your opinions on capitalism. However, what you perceive as ‘idealism’ is actually the reality of a college student who studies hard to pursue what they love at the cost of knowing they will have to struggle out of college, a byproduct of capitalism in America.
To correct you, I am a first-generation, financially independent student who studies at Lehigh at no cost because I have worked hard and have earned myself a spot here.
Perhaps if you’d like to fund my trip to a communist country, maybe you’d get to learn more about me and and how my definition of working hard is not defined by communism nor working behind a computer screen.
I am most grateful for the amazing Lehigh professors and students who remind me of my capabilities and how my Lehigh degree will abound an abundance of opportunities. I am also most grateful for the freedom of press in America where we can discuss such difference of opinions.
A lot has changed since 1967.
I would love to talk more and further this conversation via email.