School Spirit

FROM February 26, 2004

From some spam:

"From: May Burroughs
To: Julianne Shepherd
Subject: no more lying in applications - buy a degree from an accredited university here

GET YOUR UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA
Do you want a prosperous future, increased earning power
more money and the respect of all?
Call this number:
1-720-834-2989 (24 hours)
There are no required tests, classes, books, or interviews!
Get a Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and Doctorate (PhD) diploma!
Receive the benefits and admiration that comes with a diploma!
No one is turned down!"

From "Blisseur Hahn's Fook Mag," my friend's bizarre, highly enjoyable mini-zine:

"My first choice for college: Harvard
Second choice: The Academy of Wolves"

Lately Jessica and I have been talking academia and education, privileges neither of us has experienced properly but that dangle from above with the glitter and precariousness of a diamond chandelier. In certain ways, I understand where Kanye is coming from on "All Falls"--parental obligation is the absolute last reason to go to school. But I bet it would score mega points on Family Feud for the "Why do middle-class people go to college?" question. I can't imagine being a parent, trying to teach my kid that education is important for reasons other than attaining that amorphous rich-person's job up in the sky, despite all cultural arrows to the contrary. Because, what they don't tell you enough in this capitalistic, reward-based pogo convention, is that education is important for its magic powers to elasticize the world. That the world gets bigger and more wonderous and scarier and more managable at the same time, the more you understand of it.

It guess now it's a little different, since the college-automatically-leads-to-job thing is a myth debunked. Kanye, in "School Spirit": "This nigga graduated at the top of my class/ I went to Cheesecake, he was a motherfucking waiter there." In one line, he sums it up: no jobs + no college = enrollment plummets nationwide. This is obvious and sweeping, but it must be reiterated: education in other countries is abundant and valued, because it is culturally more important to be smart than to be rich.

Also, I don't know how it would be different if someone of relative life-authority over me had actually grasped the scruff of my neck at 17 and actually said, "Yo, you should go to college simply because the world will Get BIGGER." I probably would have thought they were [uni]corny.

addendum! O-Dub kick-started this topic about like, a million years ago, or two weeks ago, whichever is more internet-accurate.