Wu, Xi: Paglia

How Do We Take Advantage of a Four-year College

Camille Paglia said, “Jobs … should be front and center in the thinking of educators.” I am just a student, not an educator. I know little about teaching people, but I do know what and how to learn. Jobs are important for everyone, especially for those college students who invest load of time and money for their higher education and hope to find a decent job with their bachelor’s degrees. Education is an investment of money, time, and oneself. It is an investment that depends more on us. So, what should students do to take advantage of their four-year college experience? I believe they just have to learn and experience as much as they can.

Undergraduate programs in United States do not require students to declare their major until their junior year, which provides them an opportunity to take any courses that they want to find out what they are really interested in. It also encourages them to learn various kinds of knowledge and not just limit themselves to their major courses. I am chemistry major and I am taking courses like piano, computer science, and microbiology. I am planning to take molecular biology in the future. Those courses are not required for my major; I am just interested in learning different things. That’s why I want to take them. Some of my friends and even my professors do not understand why I want to do that. They keep telling me to finish my undergraduate degree as soon as possible and then go or to graduate school get a Master’s or PhD. I believe that the undergraduate years are the time that one should use to build up one’s knowledge base. The more you learn the better you are. It does not matter what you learn: the arts, science, or literature. Those are all stored in your mind in pieces, and you will find the connection between them when you are in graduate school, in your job position, or in your lifetime’s experiences.

You can say how terrifying the current education system is, but one thing you cannot deny is that the current education system provides students with different kinds of experiences. I am a student, but I worked in catering for one semester. I would not say I liked that job, because I did not to get up at 4:30 in the morning and serve people food while working on my college degree. However, I had a great experience with that job; at least I now know how to wrap different styles of napkins if I want to take a girl out for dinner. Our higher education system also provides plenty of undergraduate research opportunities. Many of those research projects are even associated with NASA or FDA, where we may find a permanent position later if we build good personal connections. Undergraduate research is a great experience for those who plan to continue studying in their majors. I did summer research in chemistry and I learned a lot about what research is, what graduate school will look like, and what field I am interested in. My research experience dramatically influenced my future plans.

PhD programs normally take a student five years to accomplish. A bachelor’s degree normally takes four years. It is a long and important time in our life. It is an important investment. We should learn and experience as much as we can to take advantage of those four years, so that we will be well prepared for graduate school or for the first real job in the our life. We students should take responsibility for ourselves.