Grad School is a Scam
Graduate degrees are a scam. Most degrees are a scam. Schools are mostly scams. Early elementary school, fine, I learned a lot then. How to read and write and do basic arithmetic. That stuff is essential. But after that, most of it was a bunch of bullshit and a waste of time. I was high and/or drunk, or strung out and/or hungover, for almost the entirety of high school. Under those conditions, I got good grades and don’t remember anything from those years other than the trauma and crippling depression. College is a scam too. I spent what felt like most of my time there taking “required” courses that had nothing to do with my major, my areas of interest, anything I’d be using for future jobs or life in general. My degree, English with a concentration in creative writing, is basically useless. Like most degrees, it’s mostly meaningless, a note employers scroll past on the way to my work history. While I know that employers have called my references, I don’t believe any of them ever contacted my university to confirm I actually went there, or check that it even really exists. I could have said I went to Harvard or Yale, the prestigious intellectual breeding grounds of the nation’s most successful psychopaths and sociopaths and Conan O’Brien. I could have invented a fictional college. I could have gone to the best imaginary college in the world.
I believe I’ve learned more in the years since leaving college than I did in the whole of my decades of formal schooling. I’ve certainly learned more about history, politics, culture, the economy, philosophy, and the basic workings of the world, than I did in school. Library books and podcasts have taught me more than the majority of teachers did, and did it for free.
I have also found in recent years, since I’ve been out from under the weight of perpetual crushing depression, that I’m smarter than average. Probably smarter than most people. While this is more a testament to the astonishing stupidity of most people than my own intelligence, it does mean that I’m better suited or more capable than most people for most things. To give some idea of the baseness of this intelligence level that I’m over and many seem to be under: today at work I was asked to help several people with master’s degrees get a projector working. The first thing I did was check to see whether the projector was plugged in, which they had not. The projector was not plugged into an outlet, or wired to the computer it was meant to be projecting from. They were then having trouble using the remote, which I opened, to find that the two double-As inside had burst and leaked battery acid. Multiple people, with superior degrees, making about twice as much as me, failed to check whether the machine they were trying to use had been plugged in or their remote was functional.
That’s not to say that these folks are idiots. Anyone can make mistakes, or fail to do the minimum required. There are things they know more about than me. They paid money and went to graduate school to learn about those specific things. If I spent that money and did the same, I’d know all the same things. But, the fact is, I could learn those things without the time and expense. I could do these people’s jobs. The only reason I can’t, that I wouldn’t even be considered for the job, is because I don’t have the degree. I could learn everything in the courses independently, completely master it, but it wouldn’t matter, and wouldn’t get me a job in the field.
That is why, despite all the bullshit and relative meaninglessness, I’m currently planning on getting a master’s degree. I’ve intended to before, and not followed through because of the expense, the bullshit nature of graduate degrees and their worthlessness in relation to experience and ability outside of the narrow elitist hierarchy that requires them, and because I hate school. I always hated school. Still have nightmares about school. But, I guess, I’m going back to school.