I entered college unwillingly, having been convinced by my public school years that academia was bullshit for the mentally inept. Three years and a B.A. later, I can say I was right, for the most part. Freshman year convinced me I was right when I had a professor who couldn't spell a simple word give me a gracious C on a redone paper (which only had to be redone because she didn't like the first one, not because it was a bad paper) that deserved an A. The worst part of it wasn't the fact that I was an honors student who had never gotten, much less deserved any grade lower than a B on an English assignment in her life; what really bugged me about it was the fact that this two-bit adjunct decided to realize she was a worthless nothing (or at least the thought bubbled back to the surface after years of therapy and self-help mantras) and she decided to take it out on me because I was the smrt one. I wondered what she thought when she heard that I was inducted into the Honor Society, that I was running two clubs, and that I graduated in three years. I hope she OD'd on her Prozac.

Not all of academia was bad, though. In kolige, once you find your niche, you learn that professors are human beings, not just robots programmed to make your life miserable. Not only are they human beings, they're interesting human beings; if there's one thing kolige teaches you, it's that it is really really hard to find interesting human beings. Hence, most of my senior year was spent hanging out in the office of those interesting human beings, and to them I give my most heartfelt thanks for restoring my faith in the human race. Or at least teaching me that film geeks can be normal...in their own definition of the term.

It ought to be stated now that kolige is a place not for the education of the mind, but for the education of the social system. No one says that they learned the proper format for highlighting a book during their undergraduate years. They do, however, brag about the fact that they learned how to keg-stand, that they know 26 ways to get a girl drunk and naked within fifteen minutes, that they've given more closet blow jobs than Anna Nicole Smith, and that they've made friends they'll stick to for the rest of their lives. Aside from displaying a disturbing trend of hedonism, these behaviors prove that the students of kolige grow in social ability and understanding moreso than they have during their high school years because, for the majority of them, it is their first time on their own. They have no one to look up to regarding social mores except for those who are around them and from this they develop their own social skills and abilities that will haunt them (or taunt them) for the rest of their lives.

Was kolige worth it? To each their own. For me it was a combination of new experiences and reassurances of what I already knew. Considering I never wanted to attend at all, and am now enrolled in a Master's Program, then I'd say yes, it proved useful after all. If not as a place of higher learning, then as an amniotic sac protecting the secrets and the lessons and the stories of the integral last phase of childhood encountered before the real world's sharp talons beckon. Most people deem it the best years of their lives; so far, I'd have to agree. Why else would I want to stay in school forever?