Malia Obama to Take a "Gap Year" off from College Before Attending Father's (Alleged) School Harvard

This is some kind of trend, The Five are telling me.

Is this a good idea?

I think it is, actually. I don't know about you, but when I got out of high school, I was burnt. Not because it was so hard (it was, here and there, but that's not the problem), but because it was just a grind I was so tired of. I was sick of it. I was cynical about it -- I used to have a joke that 90 was the best possible grade, and a single point higher than that indicated you wasted your time.

I guess senior year is sort of a "gap year" for many because they blow it off.

I think if I had had to work between college and high school, it would have prepared me better for college, because it would have instructed me in no uncertain terms that I was unskilled and a bad worker and I had better get that Muppet-Felting degree (with really good grades) if I ever wanted to get one of those jobs where you really don't need skills and can kind of get by with being a bad worker.

I've said this over and over: education is wasted on the young. There's a push quality to it -- it's what you've been forced to do since you could talk -- and really, if you want to learn, it should have a pull factor: I'm here because I really want to be here, and I actually want to learn some shit.

Now, the drawback people will point out is that people who take a year off often do not continue with education at all.

But... is that a bad thing? If you never go back, I'm going to assume, generally, that one of two things is true: 1, you have a pretty good job out of high school, or 2, you really do not have a great desire to continue with college. Or, 3: You have kids to raise. In which case, maybe you should go to college, but it's a tough thing to balance.

If either of those things are true, the value of going back just to go back is a bit dubious.

Now what I'm all about is some serious adult learning. I needs me some of that.

Now that I'm older, I actually want to learn things.*

* I think I do, at least. Though I suspect, the moment I'm in a classroom environment being assigned to read chapters and do exercises, I'll go back to my old rhythm of work-dodging and trying to figure out the bare minimum needed to count as vaguely "learning."

posted by Ace at 06:37 PM

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