College Education

I saw this quote earlier today, and it was interesting enough that I wanted to share it.

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running this country" - Kurt Vonnegut


The quote was featured in a rather cool photograph that I saw this morning. The irony was that this looked very much like a homemade button that some kids from my high school would wear in their desperate hipster campaigns.

Which led me to think, I don't know if I'm comfortable with my college classmates running this country either. After all, I'm about to graduate from Dartmouth College, and I am not entirely certain at all whether my friends or I are at all ready to be entrusted with running anything.

Sure, we're (for the most part) ready to enter the labor force, sad as we are to be finishing school in just over a month. I don't think, however, that our classes have taught us at all on how to run this country.

Sure, over these last four years college students around the country have acquired the skills to live on their own and to productively contribute to society (at least some of us). Yet the jump from college life to real life is scary enough. When are we actually going to get the training we need to run this country?

This has already been on my mind for some time. A favorite conceit of the ivy league education is that the colleges are there to create the leaders of tomorrow. Yet, despite this oft-repeated maxim, neither Dartmouth nor any other school (as far as I'm aware) has yet to issue a handy course reader on running this country.

Which, like so many other things in life, is entirely disappointing.