College should change us for the better; true or false?

This archived article was written by: Cassidy Scovill

College life is the first step on the road to becoming an adult and what it’s really like to have your parents take care of you. School is harder; less classes and no your mother can’t call you in sick so you suck it up and go to class. Has college changed me? Have I become an ideal member of society? The answer should be obvious but, it isn’t.
As I look on my past and all the K-12 schools I had went through originally, I realize what a joke some of that schooling was. My oldest memory of elementary school is when they were teaching kids how to tie their shoes, and I was one of those kids that some teachers gave up on. I tried twice and the teacher gave me a pat on the head and sent me off, probably told me to stick to velcro shoes. To this day my most embarrassing secret is that I still don’t know how to tie my shoes right, no bunny ears for me.
Let’s not focus on my short comings because you would be reading forever. Let’s talk more about how the third grade was the worst grade in elementary school. You begin with learning to share toys, basic addition and spelling. I’ve had a spelling test where one of the questions was how to spell the word name, which was listed at the top of the quiz. So when you get in to third grade, it’s the school slapping you in the face with actual work and learning. Cursive, multiplication and basic science slapped me around like a red-headed step child. The shock of all this hit my sensitive brain so hard that it is a wonder I wasn’t in a scholastic coma. After third grade was when I started to dislike school and it was just my luck that junior high would cement that hatred.
Junior high was the first time that I wanted to drop out of school and I probably thought that on a daily basis. It also brought about an evil that I can equate to the worst torture imaginable, algebra. When I got to the point in my life where letters and numbers were used together, I thought this must be what hell is like. I failed the first algebra class and when I retook it, I brought new meaning to failing.
I entered a contest with another student to see who could actually get the lowest grade and I think I won. I didn’t enter the class with this goal at first. I wanted to actually learn, but let’s just say I had help from certain teacher. I finished that class with my final grade somewhere around five out of a possible 100. That is the major thing I remember from that school, other than having a teacher look like an older Burt Reynolds.
High school, the big leagues where a person grows up and where kids act grow up and start swearing and smoking. Before going into high school, I originally thought if junior high was bad than this has got to be on another level of math and misery. It wasn’t that bad at first, I got to drive, and that was cool until I crashed my car. I crashed into the back of a dump drunk hauling a back hoe. My car was so little it didn’t even phase the driver as he drug my car for a good 15 feet before getting out to call the cops. No ticket, no injuries and I still got out of school for an entire week. If skipping school was a talent, I would be the best at it. I was so good at skipping that when I was given the opportunity to get out of their early I took it and took off.
Now I’m in college where wild keggers are being thrown on an almost daily basis and where the talent for “Girls Gone Wild” comes from. That my friend is called getting a higher education and I have almost completed a year of it. This year went by fast and I’ve actually learned some stuff about self reliance. I learned how to cook beyond a microwave and the old-staple Ramen. I cooked a burger and I felt like a gourmet chef without the hat, and the sad thing was I felt I deserved one. Cleaning up the dorm sadly not something I learned but, I have learned how to block out horrible smells. The stink of our kitchen is the thing nightmares are made of, and no one wants to take responsibility. College is probably the greatest scholastic experience I’ve had in my life, and the reason is probably having three classes at the most. We all learn to be self sufficient or at least how to weasel our parents out of some money. College is a institution of higher learning and I’m currently enrolled at CEU.