I graduated and all I got was a cheap pen

Posted on March 6, 2008
Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment

The North American educational system is truly a huge disappointment; unfortunately, you don’t realize this until after the fact, i.e., after spending countless years working your way through the system to earn your degrees. And then you finally graduate and you think that something great just happened and all the opportunities in the world will fall on your lap and you will be happy. Well, it ain’t so!

The truth is that the whole system is a scam. They schools already know that. When I finally graduated with my doctorate after having spent a total of 26 years in school (since starting great school in age 6 of course,) all I received from the university (other than my degree) was a promotional pen and a survey. Yes, they sent me the pen so that I can complete the survey and tell them of how successful I am now that I have graduated. For a second I thought that it was a joke but then I realized that nobody in the post-secondary educational system actually have a sense of humor. So, I threw the survey in the garbage and I am keeping the pen as a reminder of the stupidity of conformity.

I did manage to get a good job a few months after graduation but after checking the market for a while it became obvious that graduate degrees are hardly worth the lost wages you must incur in order to finish your studies. The pay is higher than just having an undergraduate degree but it hardly justifies nearly 300 thousand dollars lost in wages in the 5-7 years it takes to complete a Masters and a Doctorate degree. I guess some think that promotional pens are worth more than that. Lesson learned, I guess!

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