I remember high school counselors pushing us (me and everyone that I hung around with), telling us to go to college. They were saying things like, "Go to college, it will make you more worldly" and "It will make you well-rounded", "You'll be able to get a good job".
If you ask me, being well-rounded is highly overrated. I've known a bunch of well educated people. And they're no more well-rounded than anyone else I know. No one is really "well-rounded". I mean, how can you be well-rounded when your dysfunction is a condition so half-ass?
Going to college doesn't make you less dysfunctional. In fact, for certain individuals and under certain circumstances, college can make things worse. I figure, you'd have to have traveled to every corner of the world, from East to West, to North to South, and back again - and have experienced a significant amount of life, to be well rounded. And no one that I know has ever gone that far. So certainly, college life will not "round you out". From what I hear, it will usually cause you learn how to cram for a test. And, you will more than likely learn every drinking game in existence at that time.
In the July 28th, 2011 issue of the Los Angeles Times, in an article entitled, "Some up-and-coming chefs are skipping culinary school", it cites that some culinary schools across the country are facing lawsuits - accusing them of fraud due to misleading students about the cost of tuition, job placement, and how much they'll earn after completion. Some feel that even when you attend a well respected culinary school like the Culinary Institute of America you could be "wasting your money". Costs can mount up to $50,000.00 for a two-year associates degree, with no guarantees that you'll land a chef position that pays well enough for you to be able to pay back the money, if you out a loan in order to attend. The average wage for a restaurant cook if just under $22,000.00 annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So when you attend the culinary arts program at the Art Institute of California, that would only cover one-third of the tuition.
I don't consider that to be a very "well-rounded" decision; not "back in the day" and certainly not right now. Not at a time when the average college student (which is most college students because the majority of people, when tested, are in fact - average) finishes school with a college degree - which means that their parents or the government, or both, has paid for them to become educated in sororities, fraternities, boys (or girls, whichever appeals to your taste), and drinking. Because in so-called well-rounded, college - people "seeking an education" get caught up in all kinds of other stuff when they go to school. And, the sad part is - after spending all of that time and money "getting an education", come to find out what they've really spent money on is to graduate, not find a job, and end up right where they started out - waiting tables in a restaurant somewhere to make ends meet. Crazy.
Michael Ellsberg, the author of The Education of Millionaires, posed the question, "Do you want to chase degrees or do you want to chase success?" I read that and thought to myself, Yeah Michael - good question. For me, chasing a degree wasn't the well-rounded path that I wanted to take. I wasn't seeking the type of "education perfection" that comes with the success of obtaining a degree. I wanted "life perfection" so to speak, first - and always.
I figured that I should take a more practical approach that would lead to me feeling good about the achievements that I'd make in real life, in the everyday kind of stuff I'd pursue. I'd had enough of "my papers judged" in my school life, thankyouverymuch. So, deep down inside I kind of knew the "college thing" wasn't going to work for me. Although being young and not knowing doodley-squat about who I was, I found myself chasing the same things that the people around me were chasing; boys, parties, etc. But thank goodness I didn't rack up any big student loan bill in the process.
I never really wanted to be well rounded. But, what I did want was to feel whole. I never really admired anyone, either. Although there have been people whose work I've admired. No one that I know has ever said (not out loud at least) that they were "well rounded". So if that's something that people strive for, I've never heard anyone talking about it.
Everyone that I've known, have ever met, and probably will meet in the future is broken... somehow. And like the rest of us they're damaged enough to make a beautiful mess out of something, causing it to be uniquely their own - uniquely and perfectly, beautifully flawed.
So just like a chocolate souffle that you'd learn to make in a culinary school or that you could make at home following a cookbook recipe could break, fall, or just might not taste good - one things for sure, either way, the process and the "mess" that can happen in our lives, that causes us to supossedly not be well rounded, is what makes us so wonderfully humane and unique.
Oftentimes, those who contribute something worthwhile to society are fun to watch as an interesting mess. Which further tells me that being "well rounded" is actually quite boring and overrated.
