I went to an Ivy League college, on full academic scholarship, graduated with a good GPA and I won a competitive fellowship at graduation–but I feel I wasted the chance to get an education during my four years. I spent much of that time getting high, playing basketball, chasing girls, and otherwise goofing off. The opportunity that I wasted was the chance to engage with some of the best professors (and students) in the nation, which I actively avoided whenever possible. As an example, I was studying English, specifically creative writing, but I managed to avoid taking a “tough” professor who was reputed to be very demanding and who sometimes put students on the spot in class (asking hard questions and following them up while others watched the one-on-one discussion with professor and student. If you hadn’t read the poems under discussion–and I often blew them off–you would be pretty humiliated.) So I opted just to skip this professor and this course.
Mistake. He was a giant in his field, and he taught you how to read a poem, how to argue your point, how to defend your beliefs with convincing evidence, and I had to learn all that in graduate school, ironically from people who had studied with Professor Tough and used his methods, only not so brilliantly as he had.
I did this over and over, taking courses I thought would be easy, finding ways around assignments, getting lucky sometimes, and doing about half of the hard work I was capable of doing (and that, as I say, I had to do a few years later, anyway–when I entered grad school, I had to read a shit-ton of books for the first time that my classmates had read several times before in college.) When I see my college students behaving lazily today, treating college as a time to kick back and have fun (often on a scale far more hedonistic than I did) I get frustrated because I know how hard it is to talk to them about taking themselves seriously.
Did you waste your chance to get a real education in college?
Yes, me too. In my defence, the college wasn’t that great and my faculty was, at the time a complete mess due to a series of increasingly disastrous reorganisations.
We full time students often looked at part time students, who were older and usually had been or still were employed. The discipline and zest and seriousness they had for studying made us vaguely ashamed. I tend to think now that college IS wasted on the young.
Yes. My experience was kind of the opposite of the OP, in that the college I went to was so focused on studying and staying afloat that nobody ever had time to do anything fun. I feel like those who were able to were superhuman. My college was on trimesters, 15 weeks of learning crammed into 10. There was always too much reading to do in every class and it eventually became a juggling game of which class I could do less reading in. Somehow I learned enough to get decent grades, passed my comprehensive exams senior year, and complete my thesis, but it just felt like I never had any time for a social life. After a long day of school I just wanted to sleep, mostly. It was a very whitebread college with upper class kids who liked to talk about themselves, it definitely made me feel out of place. It was during these years I got to experience the joys of my first stress migraines and anxiety attacks and, later on in senior year, depression.
The hard work definitely helped prepare me for graduate school, but I’ll always feel like I wasted college when it comes to the “have fun!” part.
I didn’t waste it by partying, but I wasted it in that I was there to get a degree rather than an education. I was still in the Navy at the time, and I needed a degree to be an officer. So I did what I had to do to get my B.S. since I figured that would be enough.
Turns out I made a lousy officer, and five years later, I returned to the civilian world with an engineering degree but with only a minimal engineering education. I did get hired as an engineer, but I had to learn a LOT on the job. Had I known the degree would end up defining my eventual career, I’d have done more than learn to pass each professor’s tests.
I don’t know how to describe it without bragging but I got a superb education while at college. I loved my major (anthropology) was very involved in Theater (including working backstage for the NYC Opera when they toured through), wrote for the paper, was on an intramural team, did a summer archaeological field school (in Bulgaria), heard Jane Goodall and Stephen Jay Gould speak, took Physics (for majors) because a famous professor was teaching it (brilliant lecturer), worked in an archaeological conservation lab and the library. Rarely or never unprepared for class, rarely or never skipped class except for illness (and not the hungover kind). Lived both on campus and off campus. Made lifelong friends.
My freshman year I took two 300-level glasses (Political philosophy and Buddhism) without the prerequisites; the professors signed me in.
I had about 1/3 grant-based scholarship, I also paid for about 1/3 myself through money I had been saving and investing since age 13. And my parents paid for a third.
I got a ton out of it. I guess I think drinking and “partying” is kind of boring. I went to a few frat parties, thought “not my scene” and spent my time doing other things. My parents never forbid alcohol and its incredibly easy to get served in NYC when you’re high school age, so there was really no allure in drinking heavily.
I used the fact that my high school used the same calculus text as the college to advance=place out of my first semester of math (which required studying through the summer to pick up stuff we hadn’t covered in high school). So I started out with the second term of calculus and got to take differential equations the second term. I wanted to do the same with physics, but they didn’t have a system for that, so I opted for the math-based physics (“Physics for masochists”), and learned that, even though I aced every physics test and assignment in high school, I was still really dumb. It forced me to really learn the material.
I did undergraduate research in geophysics (and decided it wasn’t for me) and then in biomechnanics, which forced me to teach myself a lot of mechanical engineering, not to mention mathematic modelling, various types of metrology, and how to use high speed cameras and strobes. I got to work in Doc Edgerton’s lab and darkroom, and I learned how to beg, borrow,m and steal lab space and equipment and computer use. I was an actor in one theater group, a propsmaster for another, and I wrote a play that we put on for yet another group. I got to meet and work with people who were (or would become) leaders in their fields.
My undergraduate thesis got turned into a journal article and an article in a pop science magazine, and I got a local TV interview out of it.
I learned to row, sail, do judo, and fence and played IM sports.
On the other hand, my social life was, I have to admit, pretty pitiful. I really didn’t date. I didn’t drink (I still hate beer) and I wasn’t good at partying. It was grad school that drove me to drink.
I went to one of the top universities in the country, and I got a lot out of the experience. I got my degree, with double majors. I met a massive number of interesting people, including my fiancee. I had fun, matured as a person, and generally received an excellent education.
On the other hand, I didn’t take my grades seriously until my junior year. Not my education, mind you, but my grades: stupid stuff like only studying for the exam enough to get a B when I had more than enough ability to get an A if I put in the work, or waiting to start my 15 page paper until 9pm on the night before it’s due. If my GPA had been half a point higher, it would have had a significant impact on my options after college, and most likely my career earnings.
So I wouldn’t say that I necessarily regret how I handled college; the result worked out pretty damn well (fiancee, did well enough to get and keep a steady job when I graduated into the recession, lots of friends and great experiences). I just think sometimes about how I did waste at least part of that opportunity.
No. I learned plenty, had a great time, and felt it was all worthwhile. I took the classes that interested me, including one that I knew I’d only get a C in, but with a fascinating professor (a version of this course was singled out by Esquire Magazine as being one of the best in the country). I was able to follow my interests in Political Science and History (though, looking back, I might have liked English more).
Graduate school was also great (in English, this time), with some very good professors. And the degree got me the job I have today.
Socially, I was never more than a social drinker, but I had a great time partying with my friends from the dorm.
I guess I don’t understand anyone smart enough to get into a good college and stupid enough to waste the opportunity. It took me one course at a time during my time in the Army and almost 10 years to get my first degree. I got my masters by going to night school while working full time. Maybe the ones that wasted it would not have if you had had to work hard to get it.
I went to the big State U for my first year, as a Business Admin major because … that’s what you did. If you didn’t know what you wanted to do when you were a senior in high school, the guidance coulselors threw applications from UMO at you, practically already filled out – all you had to do is put your name on it. It was either that or directions to the army recruiting office.
One year and several parties later, I was on acedemic probation and instead of taking a semester off, I re-enrolled in a sattelite of the U near my home town.
Three years and even more parties later I gave it up without a degree. I was 21, living in a podunk town in the middle of no where and I needed gone. So I hit the real world.
I’ve worked and scratched my way to the middle now, but if I had my way, I’d love to go back to school and get a real degree in something that interests me – History most probably.
I was way too immature to handle college when I was a young adult.
I feel that I wasted it by not getting a degree that leads directly to a job in an area that’s always in demand. I got dual bachelor’s in English and biology, then masters and PhD in linguistics.
Ever since, I’ve been wishing I had a degree in accounting or nursing or engineering or something practical. Actually, I wish I’d stuck with my original intention and studied architecture, because that’s my real passion in life. Unfortunately, at 17, I was a very stupid teenage girl who let men talk her out of it.
Yes and no. Looking back, I wish I had taken some more of the great opportunities that were waved in front of me in college. There were so many things to learn. But that kind of thing is easy to say years later. Sure, I should have studied a few extra hours every day, and exercised more, and eaten healthier and drank less and got more sleep too. In the end, I did waste a lot of opportunities but there were so many I could never seaze them all. Plus I also learned a lot of non-academic stuff (how to clean my clothes without mom’s help and how to unhook a bra with one hand, while drunk, are just two examples)
Sometimes I think we shouldn’t go to college until we are in our forties, when we can finally see the importance of an education. I would make a much better student today than I did at 18.
I totally wasted college. I look back now and can see I had major anxiety issues at the time that prevented me from going out and participating. I chose the college I went to because I knew a couple of people going there, too. The kicker is we don’t even really talk anymore.
I graduated with honors, holding a degree that was pretty useless. I never actually LEARNED anything…just enough to get through the classes.
It bums me out sometimes to think about all the clubs I could have joined and the people I could have met instead of hiding out in my room eating junk food from vending machines. I did meet my husband there, so it wasn’t a total waste, and I definitely took better advantage while earning my graduate degree.
No. I learned a lot, made the most of my time, and was able to make the leap from a so-so, no name state school to an excellent university for grad school. Virtually everyone else had been to “better” schools.
I didn’t waste college, but I totally wasted high school. In public school I was the second smartest kid in my grade, all A’s & B’s (the only C’s were in wood shop and Grade 8 geography because I didn’t do a presentation.) I was also a total goody-two-shoes. When I moved to a different city the day after Grade 8 grad I changed everything about myself - right down to my hair colour - and didn’t give a rat’s ass about high school academics. I was also an unhealthy, inactive couch-potato (thank goodness I don’t gain weight). Sure my high school social life was pretty good but I did not apply myself to the schoolwork and didn’t do any extra-curricular activities. I wish I could go back and do it all again with the knowledge and attitude I have now. I dropped out after Grade 11 and didn’t go back to school until I was 25. I saw THAT as my second chance and as shiftless said I was a much, much better student as a grown-up than I was as a teenager.
No, I worked my butt off in college, all with the goal of getting into a decent medical school.
And to look less like a standard pre-med grind, I took some pretty interesting off-beat courses taught by some gifted professors (yes, they are out there) and had adventures in the Medical School research labs and OR observation theaters all while still an undergrad.
My social life sucked a bit, but I had good friends and good times, and got what I wanted.
I just had a reunion with my 4 college roommates last month, 32 years after we graduated; my god it was like we were all living in our off-campus apartment again, slipping into our old personas instantly, and having a great time.
Tested out of a year’s worth of credits, so could have graduated in three years, but took four, even though I was paying for it myself. (It was in the '70s, and it was a state school, so though I took on debt it wasn’t crippling debt.) Took a lot of classes in my major, and took a lot of classes outside my major just because they were interesting (music theory). Also spent a fair amount of time doing sex drugs and rock and roll.
I totally wasted it. I also went to a top 5 school, and didn’t do shit but drink and maybe enough homework to get by and graduate. Now I just want to punch myself. I went to an insanely expensive school for almost free with Nobel Laureates left and right on the staff, and all I could think the entire time I was there was, “Am I done yet?”
Way back when, I went to a Big Ten school to get a mechanical engineering degree. I did well my freshman year, but I squandered my sophmore year, and got kicked out. I changed my major, transfered to a smaller school, adjusted my attitude, and did well again at first, but graduated with mediocre grades in electrical engineering.
That was my wasted college.
Fast forward to 1999. I was in a career track that demanded graduate level education, so I took some classes. I did well, and wanted to go to graduate school. My grades from undergrad caused much amusement when I applied, so I wound up doing a second Bachelors in computer engineering, because I was doing embedded software development since graduating the first time. Might as well formalize it.
This time, I got grades good enough for grad school, despite going part-time, with the added burdens of a career, a mortgage, a teenaged son, a dying mother, and a marriage on the skids. I worked my butt off, and I proved to myself I could have done it right the first time if I was more mature and motivated.
I never did go to grad school. I took a position in a research organization, and also proved that I wasn’t cut out to work in a quasi-academic environment. I’m a nuts and bolts engineer instead.
Yes, in that I chose a major in which it was impossible for academics alone to propel me into high enough grades to keep my scholarship. I also wasted my time in voice classes because they weren’t teaching me what I wanted to learn. As much as I liked music theory and the other academic sides to music, I really wasted a lot of time in the performance based classes without someone who actually taught me how to improve in any significant way. My voice has improved more since college than when I was a vocal major. Which means I could have taken a much more academic major and still improved as much musically–the best of both worlds, so to speak.
I stupidly assumed I’d have time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life afterwards. I approached college too much like an extension of high school. As that’s how it was presented to me.