The price we pay for brains.

When you're in high school skimming through the countless websites of the overwhelming number of colleges and universities on this planet, no one ever tells you how many thousands of dollars you will be in debt if you choose to continue down that path towards EDUCATION. Whether you choose to see it or not, we are brainwashed by everything around us at a young age that we must get a bachelor's degree if we want to "get a good job someday" and be able to live "comfortably".

Funny thing is, I spend more of my time teaching myself than some of my professors spend teaching me in classes that I am paying for. Why is this? It's amazing to me that I am in classes with at least 200 people on average, and as high as 700 in some cases. I know this is the price you pay for attending a large school but I still feel like there must be ways around this issue. I know the value of small classes...or even smallER classes because I attended one year of college at another, much smaller, university. I believe that the actual material students are presented with as undergraduates is pretty much the same across the board, however the education one recieves is different due to the modes of teaching that vary from school to school. There was one professor I had last semester who opened up the first day of class saying, "What I'm doing up here on this stage is not teaching. It is lecturing. I believe that teaching is a give and take process with student and teacher interactions and there will not be any of that here with about 600 students in the class. " He basically told us we didn't even need to show up. We could gain all the knowledge he would be presenting to us from our textbooks. So I didn't go. I got an A- in the class.

I wrote him an email during the semester saying that I agree with his views on teaching and that I think it is unfortunate that it seems so many classes, especially science oriented (arguably the most difficult to self-teach), that are offered at this school operate by someone standing on a stage in an auditorium flipping through powerpoint slides. I appreciated his honesty.

As I will be graduating this May, I have spent a fair amount of time reflecting on the past 5 years (total) of my experiences in college, both socially and academically. I have thought on numerous occasions about whether or not I regret transferring universities after my Freshman year...there are certainly pros and cons. I guess the biggest thing now is what will be in my future.