Where does it start? Where does it end? Is there a start? Is there an end? Ok, the gig's up. I wasn't a philosophy major. Hell. I only took one class and my performance wasn't exactly stellar. Why did I leave school? Well, first things first. I did flunk out at the end of my junior year in 2001. Did it break my heart though? Not at all. By that point in time I knew I had no intentions of finishing anyways. Was it because "college isn't for everyone?" Not at all. While I'm a firm believer in that notion, it wasn't the case here. Or maybe is was... Basically, I think education is for me. Just not in a formal setting. I'm quite disillusioned with the higher educational system. Why? Because it stinks. Here's my summary: I spent three years working on projects which had little to no practical significance other than exercising my ability to take in, process, and regurgitate information on command. My problem is that you don't even have to be good at the processing part to do well in college. How do I know this? Because I knew a lot of morons in college. Some of these kids were the sort that I would not trust to flip burgers without close supervision. College is a circus with dramatic hoop-jumping in an academic setting. A quote from a particular scientist (his name escapes me right now) sums it up best when he said "I managed to get a good education in spite of the fact that I graduated from MIT." Do I think a good education is unattainable in college? Of course not! It's do-able. It's difficult though. Why? Because after you spend so much time hoop-jumping, there's little time left for true academic growth. Meanwhile, the glorified memorizers (the kids whose skills go no deeper than the intake and regurgitation) are earning equally good if not better grades. So what's a college degree worth in the end? What does a college degree mean if the guy standing next to you (the one I wouldn't trust to flip burgers alone) also has one, and from an even more prestigious University than yours? In my opinion, it means nothing. I know frighteningly intelligent people both with and without. I know amazingly hard workers both with and without. Basically, here's the summary of this section: It will be a cold day in the land of the damned when you'll see me judge a person's worth, character, or virtue by whether or not they have a college degree and what school it's from.
So why truck driving? Well, why not? Actually, it would probably be best if I start out with "why not an office job?" Because the thought alone of having an office job makes me noxious. There's one topic of conversation which prevailed in every office I've ever worked in and that was "what I'm going to do when I get off work today" or "what I'm going to do when I'm at home this weekend." What's the problem here? Not just that people don't love their jobs. Deeper than that. In my opinion, it's that people don't find their jobs to be intellectually stimulating. If your job doesn't truly occupy your mind, it will wander like an unwatched puppy. Why don't people find their jobs intellectually stimulating? Because there are virtually no truly stimulating jobs to be found. The reason for this is simple. It's not economically advantageous to pay someone to do a job that's constantly changing and requires many different and changing skills. It's much more efficient to break the job up into pieces, find people who are particularly skilled at each piece, and put them in place. I've never met an office-dwelling person and though after hearing about their job, "I bet that job could be entertaining, even after ten years." So why truck driving? Surely that's even less intellectually stimulating than happening to work in an office. You're oh so right. But allow me to explain my reasoning. Here's the way I look at it. I have many personal goals. They include but are not limited to the following: I want to travel, I want to be in top physical condition, I want to be intellectually stimulated at least part of the time, I want to pursue my passions (whether on or off the clock), and I want to be well compensated for my time. Given that I find almost no jobs to be truly engaging, I've actually found that it can be great to simply fit that qualification into a different category. Which category would that be? My free time! Instead, I've found a job that kills a few other birds. It's quite physically demanding which means that I have much less physical training to fit into my "free time" after and before work. Also, there's no mistaking that I'm constantly traveling at work. While it was to more exotic places when I was driving long-haul, I'm still seeing beautiful places now. Then lastly, I'm afforded much time during the day when my mind can wander on my intellectual pursuits. What are they? Well, they change with the wind. My concentrated areas of interest since college have been evolutionary biology and theoretical physics (mostly cosmology though I'm currently wrestling with string theory). But I've read plenty of other books. Heck. I've read more books in the three years since college than I did in my three years IN college. Does it trouble me that this reading and studying is done in an informal setting with no official reward or commendation for my efforts? Not in the least. Just enjoying my studies so much more without an authhoritative figure dictating my direction of academic growth is reward enough.
Ok, there's much more to write but I'm tired. It's time to go do something easy like read jokes online. More to come... 2/6/2004
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