The Angst of the (Seemingly) Perpetual Student

‘Get an education, so that you will be empowered to create change.’

This is the mantra of the teachers, the mentors, the parents, and the advisors that fill our lives, give our lectures, read our papers, and pack our lunches. And educate ourselves we do, through the heat of late summer through the frigidity of winter to the edginess of spring. We do our assignments (sometimes well, sometimes poorly), we study for our tests, and we are aggravated by the inequality of group projects. We play sports, we learn instruments; we find leadership roles in extracurricular activities. We try to find meaning in these activities—develop our ideology and perception of the world, learn how to exploit our strengths and overcome our weaknesses, and figure out how the world works and where we fit into the grand scheme of things. We seek to discover in what small, forlorn corner of society our much-needed skills might finally be put to work in a way that best employs our abilities to the advantage of society at large.

But somewhere in all of this, we get buried in the mountain of paperwork, the bureaucracy of academic institutions, and the endless progression of quizzes and tests and standardized assessments and exams and papers and problem sets and close readings and essays… you get the idea. We tend to lose sight of the eventual purpose, and worse, we even begin to resent the system just a little bit. The independent-minded among us resent the time it takes to succeed in education—time that could have devoted to more worthy pursuits. Those whose interests are not so academically inclined come to dislike the enforced delivery of information. And those among us who took the mantra to heart—who believe that the whole point of this process is to empower ourselves to enact change—begin to resent the fact that the system itself is preventing us from exercising the very purpose for which it seeks to prepare us.

It’s not that we can’t feel the impact of our actions in any way. We spend our summers volunteering in impoverished areas in foreign countries, tutoring disadvantaged youth, and working internships. But it all seems disingenuous somehow. Whatever our private motivations might be, the system has a purpose in store for all of these activities. When it comes times to apply for opportunities, these things become lines 10-18 on our resumes: premeditated proof of our character and integrity; an assurance that we are the applicants they want. It deprives anything we’ve done of its original intention or meaning—reduces it to merely a means to an end.

Maybe when I graduate—then I’ll be able to find work doing something meaningful, we think to ourselves. Maybe when I’m done with my Master’s degree. When I’m done with my residency. When the kids graduate from high school. When I retire. Then I’ll be able to take what I’ve become and use it in some genuinely fulfilling way.

It’s so easy to let this system dictate your every move—to fall victim to the inevitable necessity of the immediate future. It promises security, stability, that extra bonus, and that big house in the suburbs. But in doing so, we’ve forgotten the real reason why we educate ourselves. We don’t have to wait indefinitely to translate that education into meaningful work; it can begin tomorrow.