The masochistic way we are thrown at the world makes one question the evolution of man. We all know people who have been locked out of the dorms, who spent that one semester down here and never came back until Kappa Carnival and homecoming weekend. We know those who have no home and are still enrolled in class, and just bounce around from friend to friend. We know those who have no money and somehow manage to eat, either by sneaking into the dining halls or mooching off friends.

We all know how our friends hustle.

We all know how some of us pull of that miracle in the financial aid office, or how the financial aid office jacked us, and we’re forced to pull of a miracle somewhere else.

Advertisement

Anyway, the point is this:a good 60 percent of what we learn in college is outside the classroom. College teaches how to survive, to cope, to react to a, not evil, but just a not so caring world.

Those of us who are used to this world before we come down here are a step ahead of the game, but those of us who aren’t learn in that masochistic, thrown-at-the-wolves way. We become adaptive adults to an all-out changing world. We become grown. And we aren’t even aware. We live paycheck-to-paycheck, minimum payment to minimum payment, link card re-charge to…well, you get the point.

College is the biggest hustle because not only do we have to figure out a way to survive, but also to live. To achieve scholastically, socially and financially, is a feat not easily achieved especially by us young and nave students of the world. We become defeated when we let the outside world affect our occupation of choice, that occupation being school, and show defeat when someone says “I need a break to get my life together.”

It’s defeat anyway you look at it, and those defeated fall down in hopes to get back up stronger, even though it doesn’t always happen.

College teaches us to choose between what is necessity and what is not. “I’m on the grind, hustling, trying to get my paper right and my grades straight” is a constant retort from our peers. A lot of us brush it off. Some of us say “I feel you!”

It’s safe to say that not only do the classes prepare us for the real world but also the late rent checks and negative balance bank accounts. Some of us need more reminders of the consequences of neglecting our primary responsibilities than others.

However, we learn and leave with a degree, or we don’t learn and leave without a degree. College is the interlude from few responsibilities to full responsibilities. One Love.

Advertisement*