(Specifically in the arts, since I initially wrote this in response to a specific person’s feelings of dissatisfaction and lack of enjoyment as an illustration major as graduation approaches. Janet, too, has been feeling depressed about similar things, and I figure this is probably a rather widespread trend. The post to which this is a response can be found here. I’m editing this a little to make it more generalized, and most of it does apply to more than just art school.)

You’ve spent the last four years of your lives dedicating yourselves to refining your skills in a particular field, and now that your time in college is ending, you’re wondering if you’ve made the right decisions. Well, if not this, what do you think you would do? What occupation would make you happy? By choosing a degree in the arts, you’re adding a bit to the steepness in the uphill battle of finding a reasonable and acceptable job, but if this is the career that will make you happy, you shouldn’t let anything discourage you from at least trying. I’m not really sure you’d be any happier giving up on art and pursuing a career in (read: resigning yourself to) some dead-end office job, or something that doesn’t interest you, or something you’d have to go through another four years of college to do.

In your senior year, specifically the latter half, you’re given more insight into your career of choice, and many of you are finding it falls short of the fantasy world it had been depicted to be. This is supposed to be part of the test, I’d imagine: You’re made aware of how much it all sucks, and you have to overcome it in order to have the motivation to succeed enough to get a job. Think of how many other students are saying and thinking the same things you are right now. I wonder how many will be fully crushed by the feelings, and how many will push through them. This is probably the part of the process that weeds out most of the graduates.

Hell, after all, look around you: You don’t think that all of these people are going to become successful, do you? You’d better hope they don’t, ’cause that means less opportunity for you. It’s a shitty way to think, but that’s how they’ve trained us. You can’t have both humanity-wide prosperity AND personal prosperity in the system of American (particularly neoconservative) Capitalism. There will always be class differences because of human nature, but Capitalism is really the only economic system that openly embraces class differentiation instead of doing its best to alleviate it.

Anyway, part of what you’re feeling is a really large-scale Buyer’s Remorse. Truth is, college is a rip-off. Part of the problem comes from the business world viewing college as something entirely different from what it actually is. They see it as a token–”Do you have a degree?” instead of “What did you actually learn?”–and not as an institution for specialized education.

Look at all the things humanity has accompished in the past without everyone being required to get a degree. Of course, the whole thing would be different if it wasn’t something that was “required” in order to get a job, or if everyone could go for free, but the truth is, it’s just another of the many goods and services available to us Cattle Consumers, only this time it’s something that’s becoming mandatory in the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s not legally required, of course, like car insurance and other bullshit “services” you’re legally bound to consume, but in most cases, it’s kind of a societal law that’s enforced by punishment from the world of business. (a.k.a. You live in a box and go hungry.)

I’m almost surprised that companies don’t require you purchase other things as requisites for employment as well. A case could be made that many enriching and educational things out there would make a person a better employee. “Candidate will have purchased the following, and must provide receipts as proof of purchase.” After all, that’s pretty much what a degree is: A large-assed receipt you can hang on your wall. “Hey, world, I bought this. Give me a job.”

Sorry, I know this isn’t exactly motivating, but it relates to this aforementioned “fantasy world” painted for us by colleges and the business world. I think every school does it, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t make money. If they didn’t instill in you this fantasy world of getting a wonderful job and living in a fantastic apartment overlooking Central Park and all this other bullshit, you wouldn’t be as inclined to continue on to graduation. It’s a little like Scientology that way: They’re not going to tell you it’s all a bunch of crazy shit about an alien strapping people to volcanoes until you’re in about $200,000. Why would you keep paying if they told you that up front?

What’s funny is that, well, the jobs many people are getting now with a degree are the same jobs our parents got without being required to go to college. (How, oh, how did we ever make it this far without it?) Not all of them ended up liking what they were doing, and having a College Receipt won’t exactly change that for anyone in our generation. Thanks to the poor economic management of this administration, that we’re actually starting to feel some of the more significant effects of that: As the job market shrinks, it begins to eliminate the difference between the jobs people with degrees can get, and the jobs people without them can get. There are a lot of college graduates nowadays doing data entry and working at Starbucks.

The truth is, you’re absolutely right–the world doesn’t deserve your art. Humanity doesn’t deserve the honor of seeing that piece of you, that thing you created and poured so much of yourself into. Nearly all of them should be ashamed. But unless we’re fond of starving or being miserable, we all have to whore out at least some of the skills and talents we have. No, this society isn’t necessarily worthy of them, but we have no choice. And in doing so, we can hope to maybe make society something that is worthy, that will appreciate what we’re carving out of ourselves for them.

But you have no hope of accomplishing that by giving up on yourself.

Brief Addendum: For the record, I have no issue with college as an institution for learning. I understand its value, I just strongly believe that it’s viewed for the most part as something it’s not. More on this, possibly, in a future essay.