The QB Snap: Buzz from Portland State’s Queen Bee

Congratulations, we made it. And when I say “it,” I obviously mean graduating in four years, being accepted to graduate school, throwing that away and sticking around to be in student government for one more awful year. Pretty much the common college experience, y’know, just minus crabs and a tumultuous relationship with an “artist” we will always love, no matter how much he stole from us.

But for real reals, we are done. And I salute you, graduate, for learning to play the game of academia and bunting your way through it. Remember when you thought college was going to be about unlocking the knowledge of the ages? When you imagined you would rub shoulders with other enlightened learners? Or when you thought you would be able to learn skills and gain confidence in the job market? I do. Did that dream die during your first or second term of University Studies?

Every study reminds us that those with college degrees have higher incomes, better health, more stable families and overall better quality of life. But here we are, graduating, and I don’t know about you, but I am wondering how learning about the white-male-American-capitalist-consumer-driven-heterosexual patriarchy (whew), which has pretty much ruined everything for everyone, is going to elevate our life worth.

We can tell Monet from Manet, but I’ll be goddamned if we know how to balance a checkbook, raise a child, maintain a “mature” relationship or convince an employer we are more qualified than the next shmuck in a more expensive tie. Perhaps we got caught up in the details of academia, trying to remember if the professor uses MLA or APA. I am sure that some of us have even cried in the past week when the PowerPoint for our group presentation failed.

We have been so wrapped up in a bubble–one where the lack of double-spacing on a 30-page term paper can cause us to fail the course, and bibliography order can cause us extreme elation or public reprimand–that I’m not sure it even matters. While proper spacing and giving others credit for their work are important skills, it might behoove us to step back and understand what our college education really prepared us for: to keep going to college.

Higher education is a cult. People mean well, but being in a college setting for a long time can truly mess with the mind. Our professors live to learn the mean average temperature for protozoa growth, the difference between colons and semicolons and hypothetical debates between Aristotle and Socrates on Reagan’s international policy. We do not.

Now is the time where most of us have chosen not to drink the Kool-Aid and are escaping from this ivory tower. But remember to smile at your graduation party and try not to think about the $30,000 you just spent to learn truly invaluable knowledge about the ancient Greek culture of homosexuals, the sociology of proletariat women from the 19th century and formal Spanish that no one from any Spanish speaking country will ever understand.

The hope we should cling to as we enter the job market (or move back home) is simple: We did it. We read the texts (mostly); we took the quizzes; made small talk in our assigned project groups; stood by when our peers asked thousands of asinine questions and somehow managed to find a parking space every day. And all of this was on top of the jobs we already had, the families we never saw and the boyfriends whose calls we didn’t return.

We competed and were victorious. Many of our friends and peers tried and failed, and will continue to chase after that very cheap piece of paper with a Xeroxed signature of an interim president. But as we walk down the aisle in our very flammable robes (seriously, it says so on the inside label) we can hold firm to the knowledge that if we can survive Portland State, there is nothing we can’t endure. Congratulations!