Opinion: College education doesn’t prep students for life in adult world

Kristen Mitchell
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 05:04:31 +0000
Opinion, adult, education, life, ohio state

OSU students at the Spring Commencement ceremony May 5. Credit: Shelby Lum / Photo editor

As my four years at Ohio State are swiftly coming to a close, I’ve had a revelation: Nothing I have learned has prepared me to graduate.

My classes have taught me the skills I need to know to succeed in my field, with a little background knowledge on anthropology and the patriarchy to throw around at cocktail parties, but there’s still so much I don’t know.

I’m confident that if I get a job, I have the adequate experience to be successful in that role. I’m prepared for a job — even if I don’t yet have one. It’s everything else I’m worried about.

How do I file my taxes? How do I negotiate a salary? How do I buy a car without getting ripped off? My highly touted college education hasn’t prepared me for these fundamental elements of being an adult.

I don’t know how to cook anything, let alone a Thanksgiving dinner, and I’m not sure when I last returned a library book on time.

These might sound like petty #millennialproblems, not worth the brain cells used to worry or read about, but these are the things that keep me up at night. That, and of course the ongoing Winter Olympic Games which are taking place in an opposite time zone.

The idea that I could complete almost any adult task myself without phoning my mom, tweeting about it for advice and asking my neighbor for help is simply laughable. I’m a 16-year-old trapped in a 22-year-old’s body which is really a 16-year-old’s body because I still physically appear too young to be at OSU in the first place.

Every two weeks I accidently let my milk expire and I don’t go grocery shopping often enough to adequately feed myself. I don’t own a snow shovel and I’m almost never dressed in a way that’s seasonally appropriate. That doesn’t sound like a grown-up to me.

My graduation is *probably* inevitable — I’ve already applied and I’m heading toward May 4 like an out of control freight train. College hasn’t prepared me to graduate, but hopefully I can learn about being a real adult on the job.

I don’t really have a choice.