In a lot of ways, college hasn’t exactly been what I thought it would be. The work load has been about as demanding as I’d assumed, and just as I’d imagined, there have been interesting classes to take and a lot of things to learn. The thing that’s been the biggest surprise for me over the past two years isn’t so much college itself, but rather the motivations behind people attending it.

I didn’t come to school to “”find myself,”” nor did I come to be able to earn more money when I joined the workforce. The only motivation that made me want to attend school was the idea of learning. I’m all too aware that this makes me a dork, which doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I may in fact be the biggest dork on the face of the planet. I read about 30 books a year, I can recite all the presidents in chronological order and I can probably tell you which hockey team has won the Stanley Cup in any given year since 1934. Dorkiness aside, I graduated high school eagerly looking forward to being able to spend all my time learning what I wanted to learn because that’s something I have genuinely enjoyed all my life: learning.

Flash forward to 2003, and here I am wondering what the hell it is that most other people are doing here. If you think I’m exaggerating my claim that there are people at UCSD who should really and truly be ashamed of being here, bear with me. True story: I was in a lower-division political science course discussion, and the TA asked us to raise our hands when she listed various reasons for going to school. To my abject horror, about 25 of the 30 kids said that they came to earn more money. Four agreed that they were here to “”find themselves.”” Not to sound overly preachy or self-serving, but I was the only kid who would admit to coming to school to learn.

There is something very wrong when a group of students admits to becoming a student only to become rich or better acquainted with themselves. Both are severe insults to the pursuit of education, and should be seen as such.

College should not be the place you go to make money. Perhaps I’m biased in that I don’t understand why anyone would devote themselves solely to making money, which seems so ridiculously shallow and superficial as to not even merit a serious fraction of educational motivation. Note that I don’t equate money with success, nor do I comprehend people who do. I would have understood if people said that they wanted to attend school to be successful, but not for the horrendously capitalistic venture of wanting to be rich.

I’m probably idealizing here, and I recognize that. I probably shouldn’t expect people to come to college simply to study. I probably shouldn’t actually suggest that we set aside things like greed and envy. But I don’t think it’s so ridiculously illogical to suggest that education should be above that. There is something intrinsically valuable about knowledge. To corrupt that value with an actual dollar amount is a terrible thing. There will always be people who want to make money, and education will most likely always be a way of enabling someone to make more money. But if people list education as nothing more than a means of financial gain, then there is something very wrong. Students should at least show enough respect for whatever field allows them to be financially secure that it is that area of study and not the economic results of that area of study that motivates them to learn.

College should not be the time you set aside to find out who you are. What exactly were you doing the past 18 years of your life that you were incapable of finding out the fundamental aspects of your personality? How is it possible to span two decades without gaining some comprehension of your own identity? I’m not denouncing people who switch majors or are undeclared. But I most certainly am criticizing this bizarre tendency to view education as a method of tuning in to one’s innermost thoughts. If you aren’t sure what you want to do with your life, wasting thousands of dollars on a path of self-discovery is surely not a good start. Spending your parents’ money and your time on various things that may or may not interest you is not a good way of developing a personality. It is simply a selfish foray into a world that is meant to develop interests that you already have, not to encourage four years of piddling around various topics until you aimlessly choose a random subject with which your transcripts happen to agree.

I spent all my childhood looking forward to college. It was going to be this intellectual haven where it was okay to be smart, okay to be fascinated by things and okay to be a dork. It was going to be the place where I could cultivate learning about things I loved. And in a lot of ways, I have been able to do that. I have learned how to analyze literature, to develop my thoughts on paper and to discuss great works of writing. This isn’t so much a criticism of people who had motives for college that varied from mine. Rather, it is a statement of pity for people who cannot see what a waste these years will be for them if they have a motivation other than the pursuit of knowledge.