How College is Ruining My Mental Faculties--Part I

My husband thinks about whatever he wants too. He's probably at home right now, thinking freely about the broken washer or maybe the Sun's affect on Global Warming, or even conspiracy theories regarding the "true" Paul McCartney's death in 1966 (covered up by the Beatles with a double and extensive facial reconstruction). He may be reading something fascinating online right now with only the whim of interest to guide his thoughts, unhampered by the prospects of writing a term paper later. He, uneducated and unemployed, has the freedom to wander with his thoughts: his brain is his own.

I am not so lucky for I am being educated: I am being taught how to think.

You may think I am ungrateful (my husband does) and you may find my complaints nothing more than the incessant and dispassionate whining of the educated bourgeois. And you may be right. But you are, unlike myself, entitled to your own thoughts.

Perhaps you need only to know my major to understand that I will be no better off than the uneducated in terms of livelihood. I am a Creative Writing major, five-year senior. I stayed in school an extra year to avoid the economic recession (like it was going to get better in a year) and am being educated with a full-ride, merit and need-based scholarship. I work 23 hours a week and am the sole provider for my family's (dis)comfort. After May, I must subject myself to the mindless duties of hourly-wage to maintain the level of life we are accustomed too. With all these wonderful prospects on my horizon, is it too much that I own the majority share to my brain?

I came to college with two goals. First, to learn how to think. Second, to then have a safe environment in which to test out my new skill. 

I have not been disappointed on the first front: I have successfully had three classes through which I have, more or less, learned how to best use my most valuable asset: my brain. These classes are, in order of my enrollment: PHIL 100 Critical Thinking, PHIL 206 Knowledge and Existence, and E20-something Theories of Literary Criticism. 

For perspective, let's look at the amount of total hours I've spent in all the classes I've taken as required to obtain my degree: 129 credit hours. That's 2,451 total actual hours I've spent in classes. Now, since I'm a good student and actually pay attention in class and do the homework (well, that is, up until this semester) we need to add hours I've spent doing homework. We'll say, conservatively, 3 extra hours each week per class, which doubles the amount of time I've spent thinking about the topics covered in my classes to 4,902. 

4,902 hours of brain-power taken from me by higher education. 

Of course, not all of this was time ill-spent. I have had several class sessions enthralled in learning the topics and theories presented. However, all of this time has been spent in guided and specified study. At the the end of my degree, I'm beginning to wonder when I get to explore something of my complete choice. When will my brain be all mine to use as I see? When will this machine be used for my cognitive musing?

STAY TUNED: next post, I tackle the question of a safe place to think . . .