Higher Education

For many high school students the process of choosing a direction to take their lives after high school can be a difficult challenge. Military? Workforce? Trade school? College? In today’s society, students are told at a young age that college is the only way to make a living in the world. In many ways that’s true, just having a high school diploma doesn’t cut it any more. However, I believe that the current education system doesn’t do enough for students to help them realize what they want to do with their lives. It seems that in many ways the current system pushes students to fall into two groups. The first, being those who know what they want to become from an early(er) age, and the second who don’t really know. I would consider myself in the later group. During my senior year of high school I didn’t really know what I wanted to go to college for. I knew I wanted to go into a science field but I didn’t really know which one; I find all major branches to be appealing. I could just have easily chosen physics or biology instead of geology. I imagine for other students this is the same way, they have several things they enjoy, but none they are convincingly passionate about. In that way, the education system doesn’t do enough to help students discover themselves as most high school classes have few options. It can be argued that college is a place meant for students to discover themselves, and I would agree with that. However, if college is the place where young adults are meant to discover themselves, perhaps less pressure should be put on them to have a strong academic drive. Surely, it’s impossible to treat college as just a way to self grow, academics are important too. Surely going to college has immense benefits, but what do students as individuals lose throughout that process?