First up, Rahul Kanakia:
"We have at Stanford the “traditional” college experience, where idleness is not only tolerated but expected. Parties, casual sex and abuse of alcohol are seen as rites of passage. More conscientious students may fritter away their time in other, less harmful activities, like exercise, reading or hours spent gazing at a television or computer screen. No matter what you choose to do, copious amounts of leisure are inherent in the Stanford way of life.
The University encourages immaturity. It has created an environment where there are no consequences for many sorts of misbehavior. It has invested time and money in new ways to hold the hands of their fledgling students, including undergraduate advisors, writing tutors, oral communications tutors, internship counselors and even people to help you fill out your grant applications.
But why is this lifestyle seen as so necessary? Is there some sort of benefit to it that escapes me? Maybe this safe environment allows us to practice being independent, so we don’t screw up as badly when we enter the real world, where there are consequences for our actions. But, looking around, I doubt that’s true. My classmates and I seem just as helpless when it comes to applying for jobs, controlling our finances and managing our lives, as we were freshman year.
Perhaps the prodigious waste involved in going to Stanford is the point. If expensive cars and clothes can buy you respect, maybe an expensive degree can as well. Maybe being able to spend a few years in leisure is a stamp of good breeding, an acknowledgment that it’s passe to work too hard.
And Brendan Selby:
"My friend Emily is a University of Pennsylvania graduate who got tricked into taking a job with a hip European software company, where she thought she would be doing sales for a little while before moving into a more creative role in management or marketing. But behind the slick facade, the job was just straight-up sales, where she spent ten hours a day cold-calling people to peddle some obscure digital product she could barely explain, all so she could fulfill a monthly quota. Although she had never quit anything before, Emily finally threw in the towel after eight months.
“It always takes more courage to quit than to stay,” she told me. “Even if it’s a job you hate.”
At this rate, her savings will run out by the end of the summer, so now she is busy applying for jobs, sometimes as many as five a day. A liberal arts major, her biggest regret is not taking a couple of courses that would have provided some basic business skills.
“I always used to look down on all the kids at Wharton,” she said, referring to the undergraduate business program at UPenn. “Now I’m kicking myself for not taking Finance 101.”