Just the other day, I had walked out of the gym thinking… which car did I bring today? (Since I’m home for the holidays and we end up playing musical cars – whichever car is out, that’s the one you use). As I continued walking, I searched my gym bag I glanced at the keys and realized that it was my dad’s car I had driven.
This made me really think about being spoiled and overly blessed. I mean, how many North Americans actually have at least 1 car in their driveway? How many drivers are there in every household? I don’t know the facts nor the stats, but I can confidently assert that approximately 9/10 households have a least 1 working vehicle and 1 driver.
Then this made me think even more about how many pairs of shoes I have: dress shoes, flats, runners, casual shoes, heels, boots, booties… and the list goes on. We have so much, yet we still want so much. We have all we need, yet we say we’re incomplete.
I’m an undergrad, as many of you know already, and seeing as I’m in my 3rd year, going into the second semester of it – I just can’t wait to be finished and receive my university diploma! About 2 months ago I had watched a documentary entitled “College Conspiracy”, talking about how school has been around all this time, but not necessary to be successful in this world – which I totally agree with. The documentary emphasized the amount of debt that a student will have after approx. 4 years of post-secondary education – which reached up to $100,000 + of student and government loans. However, my thought process couldn’t settle on this point.
I struggled to accept the fact that, yes, after 4 years I will definitely have debt and hold that against my name for several years to come, but it’s not a ‘sad’ reality. As a matter of fact, I dug deeper into this idea of having to take loans from front, back, and centre by watching more documentaries, looking for articles to inspire and motivate me to continue in the path that I have chosen for myself, and thankfully, I had found it.
The college conspiracy of being in school, obtaining an education (which, yes you may also get from online sources), paying excessive amounts of dollars for textbooks, ‘hidden’ fees, etc is by all means, was all true. However, the truth and humbling acceptance of this education system, the way of teaching, and the grades to obtain do not define me. I’ll admit, there are some professors that I wish were never professors, there are some policies that sometimes just don’t make sense – like the bus pass versus parking pass situation my school mandates for every student to pay $200+ for a bus pass, even if they don’t use the regional transit, but have to pay EXTRA for a parking pass — yes, I’ve done it. 😦 It’s all part of it. Would you compromise your job contract because there were things in it that just didn’t match with what you expected? Probably not. But, here’s my argument — the standards are in place for a reason. Just think about our society and the way our government has legislated laws – had we not had enforcement of any of them, our society would be in complete chaos, right? – The same goes for education guys and gals. It all brings a sense of order to society. It gives us something to work for and towards.
We’ve got the syllabus, we have the professors and TAs, tutoring, online resources, etc – all at our disposal. Question is – are we really using them to their fullest potential? Professors, TAs, tutors – they’re getting paid to help us, and when they don’t, we feel as if we’re not getting our fair end of the bargain, right? So… change that! Get our of your dorm room, get your shoes on, and visit your professors and TAs. Pay $20 to see a tutor to clarify your understanding on a subject – you’re not getting farther from obtaining your degree, but closer, so why not raise the quality of obtaining it? It’s like receiving compensation for a gym membership with your workplace – would you not pay an extra $40 for a full body massage on top of a free membership? Heck yeah I would.
So where am I getting at? Going back to the car scenario: we have options out there and we’ve got to work on obtaining them. We have cars to choose from, but which one will it be? There are thousands of undergraduate degrees out there, which one will we pursue? There are millions and billions of occupations ready for hiring and maybe even creating, which one will you try to fill? – We can own all of these things and call them ‘ours’, but remember that nothing truly belongs to us.
We’ve got a God out there, and He’s waiting for us to surrender our plans to Him; He’s our owner. We’re just the managers of His blessings.
“God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world.” – 1 Corinthians 7:23.
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