jennings rampage

What price, everything we want?

Chris Sabis, my best friend from college and the speaker of the student while I was student body president, sent me an IM the other night asking me to stop him from sending a scathing letter to our alma mater’s school newspaper to roll his eyes at the notion of donating as an alumni to an institution against which he bears such a grudge. It was easy; he was counting on me to say “nobody cares, it’s not going to change anything, don’t make yourself into a whiny bitter little man,” which I did. But it got me to thinking about my own college experience, what I wanted out of it, and what I got out of it.

In Gregg Easterbook’s new book The Progress Paradox, he argues that in every meaningful way and adjusted for every reasonable factor, every social strata is better off now than it was fifty or so years ago. The American Dream used to be a tiny two bedroom house in a row of identical two bedroom houses, and if you got that, you were lucky. Today, the American Dream is more along the lines of a McMansion-style house in a perfectly manicured subdivision, and that sort of level of wealth is not at all unattainable for most of society. In short, compared to fifty years ago, society as a whole is richer (not just “the rich got richer”), all of our material wants are completely provided for, and we are objectively better off.

Easterbrook’s book goes on to explore the reasons that despite these gains, more people than ever roam the eath unfulfilled and depressed. Life used to be a struggle to meet these material needs, and now that the struggle is basically over, society finds itself at a turning point where it doesn’t quite know what to struggle for. And I’m left wondering if this sort of phenomenum is at the root of why so many of my classmates find themselves loathing their alma mater.

I remember from my days as student body president hearing countless times about how today’s colleges and universities had to compete ever harder for a growing pool of incoming freshmen, and by and large, that sort of competition takes place at the creature comfort level — wireless Internet and cable TV and air conditioning and expensive food. I don’t mean to suggest that colleges don’t compete with each other with innovative curricula or state-of-the-art facilities, but I was most struck with was this emphasis on a high standard of physical comfort for students. And I’m sure that’s fine, but it might be completely missing the mark.

Fifty years ago, attending college was such a privledge that I can’t imagine any fuss over the state of the dorms or such things — going to college was itself part of the dream, and having that dream fulfilled wiped anything else way. Today, going to college is de riguer — I was never given the option of not going to college. It’s still something fairly special, perhaps, but it’s hardly an unattainable dream that few are lucky enough to experience. And perhaps when the college experience was rare, it was easier for bonds between school and student to be stronger, for loyalty to be fierce and unwavering. But now that the college experience is common, it’s a bit easier for apathy to set in.

I’m still not sure why my classmates hold such a grudge, and I’m still not sure why I don’t. I don’t know what they were looking for that they didn’t get, but I know that I made lifelong friendships, learned more that I thought possible, had experiences I could not have imagined when I was 16, and left far wiser and ready to attack my new dreams. But I had to do that for myself, no one was going to do that for me. Perhaps my classmates were looking for more compassion or more weight to their presense at the institution; perhaps they wanted to feel that they were needed there. The tricky thing is, in this day and age, that may or may not be true. So instead of searching for a niche, I find myself happy and connected with the people around me wherever I am, and that’s been working out for me so far.