In my neck of the woods, mid-May means it’s high school graduation time. Which also means it’s time for every little community newspaper to run a few page spread giving everyone in the area a few tidbits on each of the graduating seniors. Things like class offices held. Sports participated in. What scholarships they’ve received. You know, all that important-only-to-the-graduate’s-parents minutiae.
But there is always that one section that drives me a little nuts: Future Plans. Generally listing the college that the graduate is going to be drinking at this fall, as well as, most troubling to me, the field he or she is intending to study.
An 18- or 19-year-old making more than a stab at what he wants to be when she grows up just seems patently ridiculous to me. I’m not all that far off hitting forty here, and I still haven’t decided on that one yet. Invariably, the answers generally fall into a few categories:
- The young ladies going into elementary education or english lit or journalism at pricey private colleges. Apparently they all skipped any personal finance classes their high school offered, as the cost/benefit equation wasn’t even considered here.
- Another group of young ladies, hellbent on becoming nurses. Or, more likely, backed into it because nothing came to them when the question was asked.
- The absolute plethora of young men shooting for that mystical ‘business’ degree. Because that’s precisely what we’re missing in this country — more middle management material.
Just once, I would love to read an honest ‘No Fucking Clue‘.
I may just have to set up a scholarship fund and seek one of those individuals out… 
Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
– G. M. Trevelyan
