college

i wonder if we need to go, straight out of high school, into the firing line when we're not even sure why. just to move a kid out of the house and onto the dogtrack of binge drinking, shirtless screams at a sports cam, knocked up or riddled with STD's, studying at the last gasp on amphetamines with useless info shitting itself out like bad brains into the next day exam toilet. the money spent or borrowed is an Everest of debt. we are led to believe that the ladder climb to success, respect and riches begins with a college degree. but what about the slackers who squeak through high school and are not ready for prime time? why spend the cake? could the Pandora promise of college life be a let down? could a dull job snap 'real world' hardship into focus and step up a seizure of introspection about what a rightly directed education might prove down the career highway? could this then and not prematurely make a cogent blueprint once he or she knows what the fuck they really want out of life? in the days of white shoe, when boys (not girls) joined the frats their fathers rushed, a hollow leg up the Wall Street skyscraper could be won with little more than the ability to get stinko drunk or hit the whore house of letter sweater intimacy. i for one, as much as college taught me about my twisted heart, my hidden drives and my obsessive probing of the withdrawn, burned up dad's money like a forest fire. i could have learned as much or more on a tramp steamer, or hitch hiking across Australia. there is something to be said about testing one's self in the fish stew of peers. to find out with whom you can catch your breath, or learn the odd degrees of difference, or at least scab off the sophomoric whims of 'i will be a doctor/lawyer/hot shot' as soon as that chemistry course nails you to the floor. or 'i will be a writer' when at the bottom of your paper in American Studies in red pencil you read the comment: 'this is either the best or the worst thing i've ever read in my life'. but to spend or owe that much money to learn all the places you fail is false advertising and bought into, like the credit cards handed out like candy to freshmen, only to be abused. all these kids gobble up is the pretense of discipline when on a good day it's really about learning how to get by, to cheat, to do the least and still make the grade. to wait until your life finds focus might not be such a bad idea in hurry-up America.