The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

Recently, the University of Notre Dame's Facebook page (yes, I follow their fan page) posted several articles regarding the "worth" of a college diploma. Of course, they chose articles in which they were featured and spoken of in a good light. But anyway, the first article that caught my eye was from PayScale. They determined the worth of a school's diploma based on the average net return-on-investment (ROI) after thirty years (Notre Dame ranked 9th, MIT took 1st). The ROI is basically how much money you make after graduation in comparison with how much you paid for your education. Also on the Top 10 were the California Institute of Technology, Harvey Mudd College, and of course, the usual Ivies.

Pretty good advertisement, right? Well, yesterday they posted something from The Chronicle entitled "Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?". At first, I had problems accessing the article, so I decided to research the topic on my own. The best article I found was the one I posted on my Facebook, "Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wonder Why They Bothered With College" from abc News. It addresses the common belief that the best way to make money is to start off with the best education. But today's economy offers a limited number of jobs to all of these well-educated college graduates. So what does that mean? Not all of them are going to get good jobs. And so we see an increase in the number of people who took out loans to pay for college, only to graduate and find that they don't have enough income to pay it back. A Bachelor's degree will still get you more than a high school diploma - but it'll also set you back more as well.

Of course, the ever present question still stands: why is college so expensive? CNN's Money Magazine offers a few answers: supply and demand, marketing strategy, and a "luxury arms race".

The luxury arms race is the most obvious - schools are using the money to build state of the art dorms, classrooms, fitness centers, etc., essentially competing with other schools in an "arms race" of who has the more attractive campus. Personally, this doesn't really bother me since the students are the ultimate beneficiaries.

The other two, however, while understandable and clever, can also qualify as devious and avaricious if you ask me. I remember a while ago, Katy said that if it's becoming more common for people to want to get a college degree these days, why don't they make said education more affordable? Answer: because they know that people want education - and so they'll charge whatever they want knowing that someone, somewhere is willing to pay it. It's kind of like that concept about expectations we learned in economics: when a natural disaster is expected, the prices of flashlight batteries and bottled water will increase just enough to make a profit on public hype.

Additionally, comes the idea of strategic pricing. This is one I never really thought about. Obviously, the Ivy League schools are a bit pricier than say, state schools. But while the quality of education remains without a definitive price tag, people still have a subconscious respect for universities that charge more for tuition. CNN referenced Ursinus College in Pennsylvania who increased their cost of tuition and fees by 17.6% and were met with 200 more applicants than the previous year. Within eight years, the freshman class was 56% larger. It's like profiling - the way you would judge a person by just by looking at them. Stereotypically, racially, culturally, etc. - making assumptions without exchanging a word. The same goes for colleges; prospective employers will generally look at a Harvard diploma with admiration and a community college diploma with apprehension. Obviously, other things would be taken into account in a job interview, but you can't doubt that in the back of his/her mind, they're making a judgement - despite who may be better qualified in the end.

Tell Me What You Want to Hear

Validation is something I spend a ridiculous amount of my life striving to feel. It's what I want from my parents, from my friends, my teachers - you name it. Validation is defined by the Princeton dictionary as "...the act of validating; finding or testing the truth of something". I wonder what that means for me.

When I got my final ACT score back, and was still shy of my goal, I had a mini-breakdown to Katy about it. However, honest Katy asked me why I wanted that number so badly when my score was pretty good anyway; did I only want it because other people had it? It's been about ten months since that conversation, and of course, everything's different now. At this point, high school grades and ACT scores mean nothing - it's only about what I do and who I choose to be from this point forward. But it's taken me this long - now that it doesn't matter anymore - to come up with an answer to Katy's question:

I used to think that I wanted a higher score because I wanted to prove that I was as good as the people who had done better than I had. Which is mostly true, but I think it's a little deeper than that. I heard somewhere that Evan Lysacek's father told him once that if someone is better than him, it just means he has to work twice as hard. That quote has stuck in my head for months. For the longest time, I held that I didn't believe in letting other people set the standards for "ideal" or "good" - which was my reason for not doing IB - there was just so much extra work required, and I liked the freedom that AP awarded me. But lately I think I've been a lot more subject to society and its rules than I would have liked to think.

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of things happened: I had an honest conversation with my dad about my major, and we went to Family Fun Day at the University. First was Family Fun Day, which we've gone to almost every year from as far back as I can remember. And at the picnic, we saw a woman that we vaguely know but hadn't seen in a while - she's maybe in her fifties, with slightly graying hair and a friendly demeanor, and she's always alone. I commented that watching her makes me sad sometimes because of how lonely she looks, to which my dad somewhat sarcastically replied "That's what happens when you wait too long to get married."

And Katy, this is where I'll pull in my response to your SATC blog entry. With a throw to Carrie Bradshaw's "should" theory: do we fall in love and get married because it's what society and our peers expect of us? Relationships are definitely not my area of expertise, so I can't really comment on love or how it comes about. And I'm aware that most scientists or traditionalists (like my dad) will say that humans form relationships in order to procreate and continue the human race. But what if that's not what you want? Marriage may be expected, or even convenient, but it's definitely not for everyone. I have an older cousin, Christina, who's in her forties, lives with her mother who she loves immensely, has a good job, and has no intention of getting married any time soon. I think she's happy, and therefore: she's done. And while I wonder if that's enough for me - it seems to be enough for her, and I think that's okay.

But then came the honest conversation. My dad had been bugging me about thinking about choosing a major. Notre Dame offers a major called "pre-professional sciences" that basically builds a general base of the sciences in preparation for medical school, but he didn't like that idea. Instead, I should major in biology or chemistry, something specific. To me, the choice had its own pros and cons: would I rather be a Jack of all trades, or a master of one? I related this to him, and he said that med schools don't care about exactly what you majored in as long as you have the required credits. And this got me to thinking: I can do anything. I might have a shot at being creative or introspective or even artistic.

I'll probably major in something in the sciences just because that's what I do, but I'm not giving up on the idea of minoring in something I love but have never gotten to look into, like sociology or anthropology (something I blame on the high school curriculum).

But wait, why do I want this again? Honestly, I really can't explain it. But this career path is something that I do genuinely want. With that said, I'm going to take a risk and lay down my theory - something people are generally aware of, but I've never heard addressed. People who are raised by minority ethnicity families will generally fall into a predictable pattern: they'll generally do well in school, appear slightly more mature than others, hold high aspirations, and end up either in med school, grad school, etc. If you ask me, I'd say I fit pretty well into that pattern, which was what was expected of me. Let's put it this way: a few weeks ago, we went to Sharon's wedding. At the reception, we talked to all of the people we hadn't seen in a while whose children have grown and prospered according to plan. I was the lucky one, being young enough that my future looks bright and promising, but I don't have to actually deliver much more than a smile and a "Thank you". But I can't help but think about what would have been thought of a family who raised a kid that quit school and ran off to join a band or something radical like that.

Also, I finished A Clockwork Orange a while ago. But I was waiting until I had generated enough material to comment on it. ACO was, as I've said, about a teenager named Alex who had a passion for violence and destruction. Anyone with basic knowledge of the story would know that the book is about how the government performed an experimental procedure on Alex that would make him hate violence - "curing" him and making him fit perfectly into society (which is very ironic, if you read the book, but I won't say much more). Basically, they forced him into a cookie-cutter and, as a character protests, took away his sense of humanity by taking away his ability to choose. Alex was choosing to be violent, but that choice was revoked by the government, so the question stands - is it better to have a perfect citizen with no free will, or to have an imperfect human being that is exercising his rights?

But it's Sad and it's Sweet and I Knew it Complete

In 1998, I couldn't skip or kick a ball to a target. But I did however, speak in complete sentences, know my home address, appear emotionally stable, and use scissors 'effectively' (whatever that means). I was deemed ready for grade school.

And tonight (or, yesterday, really), I graduated from high school. It wasn't what I expected, somehow - maybe it's one of those things that you hold impossibly high expectations for and end up disappointed in the end. But 'disappointed' doesn't seem quite right - and I'm not sure what is. I have earned something. I'm just trying to figure out what.

Today, I flipped through an old issue of Vogue at Dimensions while Katy got her hair trimmed. I used to read things like Seventeen and Elle for various reasons, like fashion or beauty tips, etc. But today, after passing over a ridiculous number of advertisements, I settled on an article about facelifts. When I was about fourteen or so, I went to Dr. Rona Beth Holmes, a dermatologist here in Auburn, to have a mole under my collarbone removed. (Side note: Dr. Holmes actually ended up being my Duke University Alumni interviewer this spring). One of the first things I noticed was that her private practice office was nothing like the pediatrician's office. Instead of picture books and building blocks, there were fashion magazines and fitness guides. There were lotion samples and skin care regimens displayed as if it was a store. The next thing I noticed was that Dr. Holmes was very pretty, and rather young - another alternative to the pediatricians I've had. As an impressionable teenager, I found it fascinating that it was possible for someone to have their career based on both beauty and medicine.

The facelift article in Vogue was about a woman, now 68 years old, who, over the course of sixteen years, went through two invasive procedures (i.e. facelifts done by surgically cutting the skin and pulling it tighter) as well as newer, alternative procedures (i.e. laser treatment). I think when I first expressed my interest in the article to Katy, it came off as something along the lines of "Look, this woman looks great after the surgeries - I might consider this when I'm her age". Which isn't true - I have a weird aversion to surgeries that are designed to make you look younger. It's like you're lying to people without saying anything. What I really meant was: Look, this is what people are capable of doing to themselves. The article was about how technology has changed over the time between the woman's first face lift and now. When she had her first procedure at age 52, it involved a scalpel and common sense: if you don't want wrinkles, let's cut off the extra skin. (Katy, I'm trying not to be too graphic). But today, new technologies are available, like laser treatment and autologous fat transfer (using liposuction to take fat from the patient's abdomen or thighs and injecting it into parts of the face that appear "sunken in"). And the impressive part about the new technologies is that they're innovative - they utilize common knowledge in a way that requires less work to be done. For example, the skin is made up of several layers and sub-layers, the outermost of which is dead and will be shed quickly. Then, the subsequent layers grow until they die as well, and the body continues in this cycle. (Coincidentally, I was reading up on this stuff yesterday for no reason). With the knowledge that the body will continue to regenerate healthy skin cells, one of the ideas of using laser treatment is to destroy the top, "old" layer of skin, knowing that new, "young" cells will grow in their place.

I'm sure that entire spiel was pretty boring to most people who actually read it. I am quite aware that I find entertainment in things that others don't. But my point is that things change. When I first went to Dr. Holmes, I left considering a career in dermatology, simply because it supported healthy physical beauty. But now I realize that it's more than something as superficial as that - you have no idea how excited I was to get those two stitches below my clavicle.

Twelve years ago, I couldn't kick a ball to a target, or skip across a room. And today, I graduated from high school, reaffirmed my belief in science, and am one step closer to finding what makes me happy. Oh, and I kicked Neal's butt playing darts at Project Graduation. I guess I learned to aim at a target at some point as well.