College

I really hate the college application process and system. It is so detrimental to people’s self-confidence and perspective on education. It changes the focus from getting a good education to getting into a certain school. What you do where you end up is so much more important than where you end up. It is important to be somewhere that you like, but if everyone was applying to fewer schools, and everyone could get a free or affordable college education, this would no longer be an issue. Schools now have to pay close attention to where people come from, making it less likely that a bunch of people in the same area will all get in. They have to do this because there is an expectation of geographic spread.

This is one manifestation of what I think is a U.S.- and world-wide mis-focus. In terms of transportation, education, farming, and economics, history has shown that smaller localized economic and social communities function better than large-scale importing and exporting ones. This is not to say that international or intranational trade is not important, but communities need to be self-sustaining in terms of where they get their food and other staples, and where they educate themselves. If people need to travel far distances or have their food shipped them, they will consume valuable resources that the rest of the world has to take up rather than moving production closer to themselves. If a community can’t educate itself, or rather doesn’t have local options available to do this, it will lack the tools to keep up with others.

I guess this forms the core of the argument for local farming and distributing (CSAs) and an effective government-run public school system that guarantees a college education to everyone. Barack Obama is right when he says that we can’t solve today’s economic problems by thinking about today alone. Education is an investment in the future. If people, whether the government or students, underestimate themselves, they hurt not only their own chances in a society driven by jobs requiring education, but those of others who will suffer when the economy is unable to sustain itself any longer without people to fill those jobs.

Anyway, one reason I’m thinking about this is that a bunch of my friends who had applied were not accepted to Brown. I’m still excited to go there, but I really would have liked to go there with them, and I feel that it’s unfair that they weren’t admitted and I was. I am not more deserving than them. I am not smarter than them. But for whatever reason, Brown couldn’t see that these were people who any school should be envious of, people who have taken on their own education, and will benefit any community they’re in. That is their (Brown’s) and my loss. I am sure my friends will be happy wherever they end up, and some of them may try to transfer somewhere else later if they want to, but I am disappointed that we won’t get to go to school together any more.