Class can be…well, for lack of a better word, intimidating. All those people you don’t know, the professor standing up, and the larger than life classrooms (if you went to a big school like mine!) are a huge step from the small, comforting, friend-filled high school classrooms you’re used to.

Lots of times, when you’re in a new class in college, you can feel overwhelmed, embarrassed, and hesitant to speak up and give your two cents.

Unfortunately, slinking into the last row doesn’t always work; lots of classes base a part of your grade on participation, so speaking up is necessary. But, everyone gets those butterflies - the fear of being wrong or of giving the wrong impression is scarring and, for lots of people, a risk not worth taking.

I had a Psychology class my freshman year of over 550 people. Seriously, seriously scary. I never said a word. Sat there with my nose in the books and kept quiet until one day when the professor polled the entire class. Simple enough, right? Well, when I shot my hand up, face down of course, I noticed the room got extremely quiet. I looked up and realized that, out of 550 people, I was the only person who had raised a hand. So the professor asked me to stand up and explain why. It was then or never, so I got up, legs a little wobbly, and grew the courage to speak up. Read More »

When I was in high school, my parents always told me that the only way I was ever going to do anything in life is if I went to college. NOT going wasn’t even discussed. You had to go to college if you wanted a job. If you wanted to work at McDonald’s or WalMart forever, then fine, you could skip out on college - but everyone knows (at least according to my parents back then) that working at WalMart wasn’t really a job as much as it was a sentence to the worst life ever.

Well, I went to college, and I even did my parents one better and went to graduate school. Armed with both a BA and MFA, I was certain I could pretty much get any job I applied for, and would get paid 35K at the minimum.

Ha. Ha. Ha. And I’m not alone. Not only have most of my friends with MFAs scrambled to find anything to pay the bills post graduation (working at Borders, in a file room…with freaking MFAs!!), but it seems like degrees in general are losing the battle to inflation.

According to this really long and slightly boring article from the Wall Street Journal, college degrees no longer carry a promise that you’ll immediately grab a job and get paid in awesome wages.

“What employers want from workers nowadays is more narrow, more abstract and less easily learned in college. Read More »