College waste of time

After five years, future uncertain, full of debt

By: Derrick Harris

Posted: 10/17/02

I know I'm late jumping on the band wagon, but I recently started watching "The Sopranos." I've just completed the first season on DVD, and the show has left me more depressed than Tony Soprano appears to be.

Tony Soprano has a semester and a half of college under his belt. Come May, I'll have five years under mine. I will have a degree, while HBO's star mob boss doesn't even have sophomore standing. But he drives nice automobiles and lives in a beautiful house. My car has more than 190,000 miles. The worst part is, even after I graduate, I won't be able to buy a new one.

My five years at UW-Eau Claire will have left me with thousands of dollars in student loans to pay back, as well as credit card debt and hundreds of dollars forfeited in parking tickets. To make things worse, with a degree in journalism I can look forward to earning a whopping $25,000 a year upon graduation.

This is especially great because I'm not so sure that journalism is really the field for me. My fear of approaching strangers to ask questions is nothing short of a phobia, and I get nauseous at the mere thought of conducting research. There is no way I am turning back now. For the time being, I can't stomach any more school. Besides, I have to start clawing my way out of debt.

Some might question my pessimism about a field I chose to study. Some might also question my apparent lack of ambition in pursuing a career that interests me more. To those people, I can only say that I tried. Unfortunately, the life that I have always wanted just isn't in the cards.

As I type this, I can see my guitar out of the corner of my eye. Yeah, I was going to be a rock star. So, like any seventh grader with a dream of being the next Jimmy Page, or in my case Joe Perry, I convinced my parents to buy me a guitar. They thought it would be best to start off with an acoustic. I could get an electric guitar, an axe if you will, when I had mastered the acoustic one.

Even with the instructional book, video and a teacher who had a serious Elvis fetish, my career never really took off. For one, I'm tone deaf, and that's never a good start to a career in music. When combined with my lack of rhythm and fat fingers, it proved to be my Achilles' heel. Although I could play the first 10 seconds of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and could almost get through "Home on the Range" with the music in front of me, I had to call it quits. I had hoped to be playing "Stairway to Heaven" within a month of starting lessons, but that was a pipe dream to say the least.

Since then I have also been dealt crushing blows to other dreams. My dream of playing professional football never really panned out. Hell, I never even played college football. And, for the time being, my goal of being World's Strongest Man seems unlikely at best. I'm not overly pessimistic, however, as I have a new plan.

During my rock star phase, I often read magazines like "Metal Edge," "Rip" and "Circus." Perhaps this journalism degree could land me a job at one of those prestigious publications. I could live vicariously through actual musicians while making some use of my degree. If this goal doesn't come to fruition, though, I'll just have to give up on being legit.

"New Jersey or Bust" – that will be my new motto. It's never too late to move to the armpit of America and start running numbers. If Tony Soprano has taught me anything, it's that the "waste management" field can be very rewarding. A college degree should qualify me for a fairly rewarding life in crime. At the very least, I should be able to afford a car with an engine that hasn't been around the world and back. At this point, it's all I can ask for.