Look before you leap, college boy (college look before u leap)5.7.02

It's getting to be about that time of year when young fancies turn to any number of wicked preoccupations that are not bad in and of themselves, but when entered into lightly can result in disaster. I'm talking about stepping over the threshold from childhood into college.
When it comes to college, I preach abstinence. Get a library card and do it yourself. Save a buck or two.
College is so completely different from what most high school kids and their parent think it is that I like to spend as much time as I can evangelizing against engaging in this deceptive enterprise lightly. At the very least, I encourage those interested in further schooling to do a serious check of themselves and their options.
Whose to say a year working your way across Europe won't be a far superior learning experience?
College looks cool and seems like the answer to life's problems, but "the media" have blown the importance of college way out of proportion. Everywhere you look it's college this and college that. "Girls Gone Wild" and "MTV's Spring Break."
In movies like "Animal House," "Oxford Blues," "PCU," "Back to School," "Van Wilder" and the classic "Up the Creek," college looks like one cool groove where the good times never end and a sweet career awaits those who hold out long enough against the evil dean of students to accidentally make that one connection while doing keg stands and beer bongs every weekend for five or six years to get the job of a lifetime.
Of course, all of this applies more to state schools than your swanky private deals though I'm sure they party too. If you are of the lucky ones going to America's great universities - Harvard, Yale, Grinnell - then very little of this screed applies to you.
But then very little of what applies to the common man will apply to the kind of people whose parents can afford to shuffle them off to private universities. It's nature's way and I have never claimed to be relevant to those kind of people unless they were trying to get back at their parents by hanging out with me.
Now back to the plight of the working class in their vain attempt to better their lot in life through social climbing.
College is fun and it can be a beautiful experience for the right people, but the problem is, no offense, everybody and his dog thinks college is the only thing that is going to save them from a lifetime of manual labor, deep frying and the slave-barge creak of cheap office chairs.
Nothing the vast majority does will save you from the fate of the vast majority. Remember that. Going along with the crowd just makes you one of the sheep. You want to be a shepherd, you need a big, crooked stick and when people make fun of you for carrying a big, crooked stick, you have to look them in the eye and mean it when you say, "Don't be jealous of my big, crooked stick, you might have one some day, too."
You must be able to get ahead of any problem and the only way to do that is with information. So here is some, ignore it at your peril.
A college education is an oxymoron in many ways. It is hideously over-priced suggesting that it must be high in value yet it is insanely devalued by absolutely everyone in "the real world."
Here's why.
Everybody and his dog goes to college these days. Most get very little out of it, waste their time and money and get a meaningless piece of paper that should read "if you believe this guy is educated, you are stupider than he is." Employers know this and are not impressed with sheepskin.
Incoming freshmen of questionable potential pack schools so tight, they often put the stragglers in temporary housing for as long as their entire freshman year.
It is called temporary housing because there is no point in building permanent housing for a group that shrinks to half its size in 12 months.
They will still charge you to live with eight guys under the pinball machine, though thus proving you should have stayed home. Once the smarter kids decide to go back and live with mom and dad for another year or twelve, you can get a real room to skip class in.
If you think your greatest problem is not being able to muddle through college, don't. Your greatest problem is that you will DEFINITELY be able to muddle through college, universities don't get paid if they kick you out for not hacking it. This further undermines the value of all diplomas.
Employers know this too.
Student loans are one of the greatest scams on earth. They allow people to borrow a sinful amount of money to pay for school before they are old enough to realize what a horrible mistake they are making.
People who have no meaningful concept of their own mortality can not be expected to have a meaningful concept of their own credit rating and should therefore not be allowed to take out education loans that will at best make them wage slaves for all eternity and at worst trash their credit rating when they graduate, fail to get that $50,000 first job and default on their loans because telemarketing won't pay the bills.
So go to JuCo for a year or two, get the required stuff out of the way, save some money, learn the pains and joys of full-time employment, join the Army or the Peace Corps or anything.
Think before you leap.
Get a taste of adulthood then go to college and lord it annoyingly over everybody.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.