By Jason Schwalm
As a fifth year junior, I am not particularly empowered to dispense any sage or weighty advice to incoming students. Retrospective glances at my first years out of high school leave me puzzled, and I surely have no coherent way to account for them, let alone prescribe action for others in similar situations.
For a regrettable period of time I was disposed towards the kind of pseudo-relativist philosophic systems that typify bad coming of age novels – such patterns of thought offered comforting absolution for my earlier transgressions, academic and otherwise.
My iconoclastic tendencies notwithstanding, there is no end to readings of the college experience. A favorite topic for pop-psychologists seems to be the freshman phenomenon, and college preparatory literature abounds with well-intentioned advice. Still, none of this makes college any easier.
However anecdotal, I feel compelled to mention that almost every family member or friend I have has left at least one institution of higher learning, myself included. Personally, every assessment of this phenomenon that I have ever heard is entirely insufficient.
The symptomatic behavior is clear enough, and often akin to depression: drastic changes in appetite, lethargy, sleeping through the day. More incoming college students know what the “freshman 15” are than could name two sitting Supreme Court justices. Everyone is warned of the symptoms in advance, and yet everyone seems to get a little chubby.
What is this overwhelming malaise that descends upon such a large group of presumably capable and intelligent young people? The traditional answer, homesickness, aside from being remarkably condescending, does not seem accurate.
Young people of our generation are increasingly prone to spend time away from home during high school. The notion that they would suddenly start missing their parents, whom half of them don’t even live with, even if somewhat correct, does not fully answer the question.
In the same light, asserting that a lack of parental control precipitates the first semester meltdown is similarly flawed even the curfew is rapidly becoming an antiquated relic. For most college-age kids, parental control dissipates long before parental presence does.
A brief look at the future that college students face, and the ways in which they are prepared for related decisions, is illuminating. Last spring, the Village Voice ran an article saying that, on average, undergraduates are in over $25,000 in debt after earning a Bachelor’s degree — a degree which holds increasingly less sway in the job market.
The behavior of many students seems to me not indicative of an inability to choose what they believe would be best for them, but more likely a realization that nothing they are being offered is clearly “best for them” at all.
By teachers, guidance counselors, assistant principles and student groups, we are so effectively drilled in the whats, hows and whens of the process of preparing for college. But all of these seem to gloss over the more over-arching question: why?
Nihilism is an obvious and understandable recourse for someone who has been given no indication that their academic ambitions have any real purpose or intrinsic value. College, while it can be a nice formative experience, isn’t neccesarily any more elevating than working, and may in fact turn out to be a huge waste of precious youth.
Nevertheless, every one of us who plays into flawed paradigm of college-as-rite-of-self-betterment only perpetuates it. Unfortunately, I am included in that indictment. I am, after all, still here after 5 years, and have signed on for another.
So, while I encourage all new students to pay some credence to the advice of their many advisers, and practice as much moderation and discipline as possible -— if only in the name of sober self-discovery — you probably shouldn’t listen to me. You’ll have to find the answers for yourselves.
Jason Schwalm is a junior majoring in English and is a columnist for The Cardinal. E-mail him at: jschwalm@louisvillecardinal.com
