Stacie Parillo sent the following letter (response sent from mail@cartalk.com).

"were they expecting me to figure out what
i wanted to do with my life at 18?"

well, i am quite impressed by what I have been reading. here's the deal as I see it with one week to go of my undergraduate education:

going to a very large university, there is little to no motivation by professors to actually inspire their students. in fact, when they want to get some inspiration in the air, they call on the graduate student TAs to say something uplifting. but these TAs usually just mutter something about how miserable their life is, and the rest of us students leave yawning and wondering why we are wasting so much time and money on this lousy excuse for an education.

which brings up a point...why? why have i sat in numerous classrooms with numerous droning professors over the past four years? well, i had no idea what else to do. after graduating from high school, i was expected to go to college, it was not "are you going to college?" but rather "what college are you going to?" i succumbed to my mother's crying and went to a small liberal arts college in upstate new york. i went through three majors in two semesters. this wasn't working out for me. so i transferred, thinking maybe it was the school and not the idea that was hanging me up. wrong. at UMass i went through six majors in my first two years. here i am a junior with no concentration.

what were people thinking? were they expecting me to figure out what i wanted to do with my life at 18? now i was locked into the alternate universe of dorm life, where no decisions can be made except Ramen noodles or pizza...

i realized that a curriculum designed for masses of people was just not for me. i wanted my own education, and decided to create it. i created an interdisciplinary major with the goals of 1) studying things i am genuinely interested in; 2) bypassing requirements that someone decided all people should take more than a hundred years ago but that we will never use in real life; 3) NOT enabling me to get a high-paying job when i graduated. number three is really the most important. i get the age-old question a million more times than anyone else: "so what are you going to with that when you graduate?"

My answer: go to grad school.

how i was taught in college was sad, pathetic. my rote memory skills were tested considerably more than the capabilities of my mind--never mind problem solving. i had a history professor who practically made you learn the exact time of day certain events happened. for instance, i know that the Montgomery bus boycott began December 5, 1955. i do not know however, why it occurred, or the impact of it...what is the significance? we don't teach students why they are learning what they are learning, and that's why there is no motivation. i told this professor that he can teach me dates and i will remember them for the exam and maybe a day or two following, but if he taught me the ideas and philosophy behind them i'd remember them for a lifetime.

thanks for letting me ramble,

stacie m. parillo

Back to Tommy's Education Forum Part II

[ Previous Letter | Letters Index | Next Letter ]