Top 10 asinine pre-college questions.
Tonight is my last night in Coronado, and then I head off to San Francisco. I figured I should probably write something before I go, but I didn’t want to just write yet another generic entry about “an exciting new chapter in my life,” my “bright future full of opportunities,” or “setting sail for new horizons.” The world’s seen enough of that.
Instead, how about I make fun of the questions people keep asking me? If you’re already off to college, you’ve probably already had to face them.
People don’t aim to be unoriginal. They’re just trying to be pleasant and break the ice. It’s innocent, and they mean well. Higher on the list though are questions that aren’t annoying because of obvious answers or repetitiveness, but instead, are a little bit insulting or tasteless one way or another. Probably unintentional, but certainly fair game for making fun of and coughing at.
Every question on here has been asked by at least three people, so don’t be embarrassed if you’ve asked me any of them.
This list is should be taken playfully. Enjoy.
10. “What do you want to do after you graduate in four years?”
If I’m anything like most college graduates, I’ll probably be desperate to get any job at all when I graduate, but I think you wanted to hear about how I’d like to work for Google and change the world with my newly acquired artistic skills, so that’s what we can talk about.
9. “Are you excited?”
Oh come on. What do you think? Of course I’m excited. I’m nervous, too. In fact, I’m everything else that everybody else is right before they go off. Duh.
8. “Do you think you’ll have fun in San Francisco?”
Yes.
7. “August 27th? Isn’t that early/late?”
No.
6. “So, are you going to do anything wild?”
Gee, what could you possibly be looking for with this question? Yes, I’m going to learn to ride a unicycle while juggling live eels, injecting myself with bizarre drugs while wearing a beer hat, and having unprotected group sex while blindfolded. At the same time. And putting it on YouTube. Seriously. What do you expect me to say here?
5. “Did you get all your shopping done?”
Yes.
4. “Do you think you’re ready for college?”
Yes.
3. “Aren’t you grateful for this opportunity?”
Am I the only person that doesn’t like when people ask others if they feel grateful about something? There’s something simultaneously self-righteous and condescending about it, and summons the same awkward feelings as when people try to talk to you about your personal finances. Yes, I’m thankful for my blessings, but I’m also proud of having overcome obstacles.
2. “Aren’t you going to miss your dog though?”
Considering that I’m closer to Sparky than I am to pretty much anything, yes, of course I am. You already knew the answer, so there was no need to ask, but thanks for bringing forth enormous waves of absolute heartbreak by reminding me.
1. “So, are you actually, like, getting a four-year degree? For art? Graphic design, was it?”
With one question, you’ve managed to put down the field I’ve chosen to pursue, question the value of a bachelor’s degree in my field compared to a bachelor’s degree in another field, belittle the amount of time and effort needed to get such a degree, and patronize my scholarly pursuits. Thanks, jerk! Now watch me help design the control interfaces and concept art for the mass-producible robots that take your job and do it better and safer, the advertisements to help sell the robots more quickly to your employer, the cute stationary for your pink slip, and if you’re nice, the web site for you to desperately try to find a new job.
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August 25th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I hear you, I still get asked questions 1 and 10 by almost everyone I have a conversation with. First of all the say oh are you working or are you studying, then you tell them what field your studying in ?
If it is IT, then they say Can you fix my or so and so’s something IT Related or build a website for so and so ?, if it is something to with Art or Design, they say Can I see your work or can you make me or so and so and something arather (logo, sketch, etc, etc) ?
Then they asked the dreaded question “What are you going to with your degree ? or What you going to after you finish? ” and when you actually tell them you find out that they weren’t actually interested unless you have given them an interesting enough answer.
I am almost finished my undergraduate dual degree in Mathematics and IT and I find it hard to believe the number of people that ask me to fix stuff and ask the question, Oh your studying mathematics, what are you going to do with that after you graduate ? As though the field I have chosen is a useless plush toy that you carry around and people laugh at you for doing so.
Best of luck in your endeavours and in San Francisco.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:34 am
I think Eric and I would have the same answers to all of those questions and/or similar ones: “Shut up and leave me alone.” :P
August 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“As though the field I have chosen is a useless plush toy that you carry around and people laugh at you for doing so.”
Thats because all degree’s are pretty much useless. Nothing is like what they get you to believe about anything in high school. Degree = instant job career and total security. It’s like high school degrees. Nobody double checks that shit, you can write whatever you want! Not saying that you’re wasting your time or anything. I have two doctorates (going on three) and a masters degree and all I do is sit around at home. Oh yeah, and I have all this without graduating high school. Boo yah biotches.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
“Thats because all degree’s are pretty much useless.”
If you had to have surgery to save your life, you’d want to be able to have some way of narrowing down the list of possible surgeons so that you don’t end up with just anybody. Even if they somehow managed to show me an example of their skill but cutting into a chunk of meat with a scalpel, it’s not like I know anything about surgery, so I wouldn’t be able to evaluate them. A degree gives you a general idea about a person’s overall competence in a field, and you can verify the authenticity of the degree itself with the institution that gave it.
Admittedly, that’s a very particular hypothetical, but the same idea applies to getting jobs. Take me as a second example! My current big, dreamy goal is to work at Google. However, Google is famously selective about who they hire (possibly because working for them is basically heaven, completely with free massages, dry-cleaning, that whole spend-20%-of-your-time-working-on-anything-you-want thing, and everything else). If I want to even be able to apply there, then I’m going to need a solid degree from a reputable school, and they definitely will be making sure that I don’t lie about anything on my resume.
I’m a particularly greedy bastard, too. I don’t just want to work for Google. I want to work for them, and I want to be able to rise up within Google high enough to be able to decide what projects from the open source community to sponsor and assign art developers to them (something else Google does that earned my admiration). Oh, and getting a raise to go with it would be nice. But to be even be eligible to elevate to that position, I might even need to get my master’s degree (which Google would sponsor, which is yet another thing I love about Google).
That’s my story, but the idea of needing a degree to work for who you want to work for is… well, that’s why most people care about graduating and getting their diploma. Even at places that don’t require a degree to be employed, there’s a certain point at which you’ll need a degree if you want to keep rising up.
So yeah. What you learn is what’s important since your skill is what actually makes you competent, not your pedigree. I think that’s what you were getting at. But the degree is what you can show others so that they can verify that you have indeed studied something.
Something else that I like about degrees and universities that I don’t actually hear from people for some reason (possibly that they’re ashamed it sounds “elitist”) is that they promote intellectualism and the progression of humanity. Frankly, I think most people are fools, and I think that they’re basically proud of it. They care about the most uninteresting, stupid things. They aren’t curious about anything with a hint of depth, and they don’t care enough about anything to pursue true expertise. They nod and smile approvingly of some figures from history, but they do so mindlessly, and whatever admiration they have for those figures is meaningless because they don’t act anything like them. I could walk up to people and ask them if they felt like they were doing anything at all to meet their potential, and they would probably know they weren’t, but still wouldn’t. It’s not even the sloth that bothers me, because I can get pretty lazy too, just like anybody else. It’s that proud apathy and willing ignorance that I find myself looking down on (gasp, what an “elitist” I am), and I think that the pursuit of higher education is one opposite of it. Really, it doesn’t have to be higher education. Any way of rebelling against stupidity is good by me. It just so happens that the whole idea behind college is to promote intellectualism and the progression of humanity by doing so. And I like that.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
You hit it once again. All a degree does is get you the job when you’re competing with someone who doesn’t have one. But if they have one too and either have more experience out of collage or are genuinely talented you can consider yourself fucked. It’s different too, when you go to college because you actually want to learn the material than if you just go because that’s what we’re told and you don’t give two shits about anything you’re learning like so many people I’m sure we all know. I don’t like the eliteness of collage though. I mean, I know some true geniuses who never had the chance either because of money or…well, mostly because of money. I also know some total dumbasses who don’t deserve anything but their parents bribed either the collage or the professors for them to pass. That shouldn’t be possible but, what can you do?
August 30th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Well, I think you’re putting things in the wrong order. You’re making it sound like a degree is the last thing they look and and only matters if the people you’re competing with don’t have one, which isn’t really true for a lot of places. I think normally, they use the degree to narrow down the list of job candidates first, and after they’ve decided you meet their qualifications, they compare you based on things like your unique style and how well your personality would fit in.
There are a lot of geniuses who have gone to college, and there are a lot of geniuses who have not. However, I do think that universities have a higher concentration of thoughtful people than most other places. Yes, it also attracts the rich, ignorant snots that you and I specifically grew up being disgusted by, but frankly, they’re almost everywhere. The nice thing about universities is that you can ignore them and instead spend your time with people who are genuinely and intensely interested in something thoughtful that you’re also interested in.
And the apathetic idiots whose parents just paid the way for them don’t actually make it to the more advanced degrees (how could they unless they actually understood the stuff?), so if you can endure and ignore them during your undergraduate studies, then you’ll be surrounded only by people who actually think and care about things during your graduate studies, and you won’t even need to see them ever.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:14 pm
JAMES SMASH TINY QUERIES!