My My Turn

Speaking of work (and we were, down there somewhere), this week I'll go to a reception for completing five years of service; that's a milestone I've not reached with any other employer. Since I was the "trailing spouse" through five states, I have had some pretty random jobs (see below). On the other hand, unlike Caitlin Petre , I've never been a cocktail waitress in a bowling alley.

And, really, more power to her and her uniform miniskirt. I'm not here to judge the job she's taken as she bides her time before graduate school. I'm here to judge her apparent pride in her inability to fill out a W-4 form correctly or use a spreadsheet-- skills that she says, in her Newsweek "My Turn" essay, her alma mater should have ensured that she had. Her undergraduate degree in philosophy, you see, has limited utility in the real world.

Really? No way!

Well, yeah: no way. She dismisses "learning to think" as a value of a college education, separating academic "thinking" from the real-life analysis of, "Hey, I wonder how much money I need to give the government? I think I'll trot out my college-level reading comprehension skills and, oh, read the directions." Or Google. Or read a book. Or ask daddy's accountant. Or otherwise FIGURE IT OUT. Is that not what an educated person would do?

Then again, I guess that's as much independence and initiative as it is intelligent thought, and, in my experience, those qualities aren't taught, they're learned by experience. Even learned, one would hope, through the experience of completing a degree. So yes, cocktail waitress philsopher girl, you're right. You have a diploma, but not a complete education. Is that your university's fault? I really don't think so.

education