Reading Response 5

Cora

“I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.”

While reading this article, I never felt too confused about what I was looking at. I felt like instead it would be better for me to choose something that had an effect on me and I could relate to on a specific level. During my years of high school, I had my ups and downs. At one point, I found myself hanging out with the wrong people and saw my grades begin to slip. I was in a rut like this for quite a while and it was hard to get out of because I had absolutely no motivation at all. I had no long term goals in mind and no inspiration to do well. My grades were a great reflection of my attitude; horrible and mostly Cs and Ds. I would do the least possible to pass the class and nothing more because that required work on my part. I began to somewhat approve due to switching friends, but when my dad committed suicide during my junior year of high school, I fell victim to that rut once again. After a few months, I began to realize that this wasn’t the young lady that my dad would have wanted me to be. While he was alive, he had only seen me getting worse and worse and just thinking of that made me feel so ashamed of myself. I wanted to change for him and me both. I started to pay attention to everything my teachers were saying and did all of my work that was assigned to me. I found our very quickly that school is easy when I put in the effort to do well. I then went from a usual GPA of 2.5 per semester to an average of 3.8. There was still no way that a university would accept me though, so community college was the right step for me in my life. It would give me the opportunity to start off on the right foot and show them that I am capable of being one of the perfect “students” that universities are looking for.

This article has helped reinforce the whole idea that seeking further education after high school is crucial to people’s overall success throughout their lives. Since the day we enter public schooling, it seems like they try to plant the seed of college into our brains. In grade school they want to get our imaginations going by asking us what career we are currently interested in pursuing. Most kids will answer with things like astronaut, doctor, fire fighter and police officer because these are the symbols of our “perfect society.” These careers seem to be the ones our kids look up to and we all know that you can’t be someone like this without years in college. So just by having these jobs as symbols, we are making our kids realize that you can’t be anyone important without secondary schooling. As we go on through middle school and high school, the force to go to college becomes more and more. We are always being rushed to figure out what we want to do so we can find the perfect schooling for our particular goals. Some choose universities due to the prestige that comes along with this type of education, but some choose community college because of the convenience of it. It is cheap, diverse, local and effective. People that just want a professional/technical degree don’t have to spend four years getting it with tuition costs at almost $20,000. It is a great way for people to start off on a new foot. Community college is great for people from all walks of life and most career goals.