School Rogue

The Lecture I’ll Never Be Allowed to Give (Week 13, 3:15 p.m., the one they’ll fire me for)

I’ve been standing in front of you lot for fifteen years, and today I’m done pretending.

You’re paying forty grand a year for a seat in this room. In four months most of you will be scanning useless crap at the home center or asking if I want fries with that. I know this because I just read last year’s placement report. I also know because I taught last year’s graduates. Same terrified eyes, same crushing loans, same future.

I’m the guy who’s supposed to sell you the dream that this degree is a golden ticket. I can’t do it anymore.

Look left. Look right. Statistically, two out of three of you will never earn enough to justify what you’ve borrowed. You’ll be thirty-five, still paying off a piece of paper that qualifies you to stock shelves and smile at customers who make twice what you do. And the worst part? You’ll blame yourselves. The system trained you to do exactly that.

I watch you take meticulous notes while I recite slides written by a committee in 2009. You highlight in four colors because someone once told you it helps retention. It doesn’t. You’re just performing obedience, and I’m paid to applaud the performance.

I’m tired of it.

I’m tired of watching bright kids who could rebuild carburetors or write novels or start companies turn into professional test-takers who freeze when real life shows up without a scantron.

I’m tired of pretending that “critical thinking” is something we teach instead of something we beat out of you by week three.

I’m tired of signing recommendation letters for jobs that require a bachelor’s “or equivalent experience” when the only experience you’re allowed to get here is sitting still for four years.

So here’s the real lecture, the one that ends my career:

Your degree is a receipt, not a promise. The university is a very expensive holding pen. I am one of the wardens, and today I’m opening the gate.

Take your phone out right now and delete the campus portal app. Close the laptop. Walk out of this building and don’t come back unless it’s to demand your money back.

Learn a trade. Ride a motorcycle across a continent. Read books that aren’t on a syllabus. Start a business that loses money for two years—then you’ll actually learn something. Do anything except sit here while we finish the job of turning you into frightened, obedient consumers with debt instead of shackles.

I’ve wasted years helping them do this to you. I’m not wasting another minute.

Class dismissed. For good.

— Your Former Lecturer (Now just another traitor with a resignation letter in his pocket)