Niche College Scholarship
Updated: June 29, 2023

Denee M.

$1,000 Resolve to Evolve Scholarship Winner - Senior

It’s easy to look down on those who take classes about Zombies and South Park. It’s easy to give a self-righteous scoff and ask “How can anyone be so stupid?” while inwardly congratulating yourself because you’d never throw away your money and your education in such a manner. But it’s not so easy when you’re the one tempted to forego “Personal Finance” or “College Composition I” in favor of something more casual and carefree. Sometimes just the dull and dreary-sounding names of college courses are enough to send even the media disdainer or the myth buster to classes like “The Making of the Harry Potter Movie Series” or “Myths in the Modern Day.” Who knows what kind of classes are out there? Who knows how much we might want to throw away the important classes for the fun and easy ones?

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Deep within us, all college students or future college students know that the boring practical classes are the ones they should choose. Even so, the alluring freedom that college affords us causes us to ignore our better judgment. After the restraints of being at home under our parents rules and having our classes picked by someone else; we want to make our own choices. So we decide to forget writing and finance classes and go for the fun stuff.

Needless to say, this is not cool.

So whose fault is it? On one hand, you might say that colleges need to boot all of those silly classes that prepare no one for anything. Zombies, myths, Harry Potter; they all need to be done for. The purpose of college is to prepare us for the future, one might say. College is supposed to arm us with the tools that we need to advance successfully through our professional careers. How can we do this if we are being bombarded with South Park and zombies? How will we ever be successful in the real world?

I say, sir, good argument. Unfortunately, there is not only one way to look at the problem. What would happen if college students sat down and decided to depend on themselves? What if they decided to take responsibility for the classes they chose to take? What if they decided that since they will have to make decisions for themselves in the future, it’s not always the fault of these higher institutions for ill-preparing students for real life? Perhaps it is sometimes the college student’s fault he or she didn’t take “Introduction to Professional Writing.” Let’s be honest here, what college out there doesn’t have classes on professional writing and finances?

It would make it much easier to listen to your conscience if these colleges would require you to take writing and finance courses. A college that required its students to take classes about problems and tasks they will have to face in the real world would be one that could boast of the incredible success of its graduates. Classes about voting, politics, career building, and, yes, writing and finances should be required. It may be hard and boring, but if a student would pay attention, he or she would be glad for the suffering once graduation arrives. The higher education institution would profit as well when they came back to the graduate and received a glowing report of how much they benefited from college. They wouldn’t even have to force it out of the former student with money.

Even so, every college student or college student-to-be would be wise to remember that only they are in charge of their future. Not a college, not a professor, and not even a degree. If we work to make sure that we learn what we need to in order to lead a successful career and if we work to excel, we’ll find that we weren’t quite as doomed as we thought we were. Zombies or no zombies.