To give back, to stop being a leech on society. All of these were motivations to go out into the working world and I certainly do come home at the end of day, cook myself a bountiful repast, and reflect “by Jove, Edwin you have certainly contributed.” But I don’t think that the direct switch from pulling to pushing onto humanity has been the biggest transition since leaving college. Instead, it has been a very closely related contrast of cultures. (Ed: I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence).
As a student, I was trapped in time, now every day is a new. Every year at school I could take comfort in the same parties, same places and the freshmen being freshmen. Now colleagues are “no longer with the company” and I realistically wont see them ever again. The Acropolis isn’t going anywhere fast for the art history major and that Thoreau is still by his damn lake for all intensive purposes to some. While the relevance of Henry Ford, the former king of capitalism, has faded behind Gates and Jobs to Journal readers. … etc.
This cultural difference is definitely tied to the push and the pulling (or blowing and sucking depending on how you want to think of it). The end goals of each place are different. In college, our goal is to grow, develop, mature. In the working world we get results and are always strive to one-up the next guy.
Of course, I am not so simplistic to say that the professional and learnin’ worlds are complete opposites. Ned the student would from time to time think of the next step. So, he didn’t want to be a total slouch and tried to get decent grades (Ed: just mostly a slouch). Other people are investing in the future of Ned the entrepreneur. They don’t want him to remain a complete bum so they try and give him some skillz. But, on Ned’s continuum of cultural crude, the worlds pre and post academia definitely are different.
Oh silly iron cage. Will you ever learn.
Pls advise,
- ny
ps: overly-serious blogs 1 : ironic blogs 0
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