Is College Worth It?

“I Don’t Want My Children to Go to College” and “Why Go to College at All?” both argue whether or not college is worth attending. They both quote many statements from famous people to back up their points.

            However, they have different perspectives on this topic. “I Don’t Want My Children to Go to College” argues that although college seems unnecessary, for students from disadvantaged background, learning in person, alongside peers, remains essential. Stacia L. Brown put forth a counterargument first by quoting Steinberg, Buzzfeed president. He states he doesn’t want his children go to colleges unless they aspire to be scholars. But Brown uses her own teaching experience to suggest that for some students from different races or the poor, what they learn in college is true cornerstones of lifelong learning.

“Why Go to College at All?” claims that college is not worth it at all. It has five reasons to support its claim. It quotes from Mr. Stephens, the founder of UnCollege. He essentially shows five main arguments to claim that attending college is not a good path for success. He suggests students should make their own decisions and fulfill their life by what they want to do.

Dreaming The American Dream

       Let's try to picture four hundred years ago we finally set our feet on the vast American plain after a long journey from the old dark world. We felt like we were just reborn with our new lives, fresh air, and endless land in this new world. "Freedom", "liberal", "better" are preferred to describe this new world. We were free from religious control and free from fear. We made our effort to build our new lives and dreams.
       
        The American Dream: A Biography and Rethinking the American Dream both quotes The Epic of America, by James Truslow Adams. An original definition of the American dream in Adams' words, "he called that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank." Here, Adams emphasized the equal opportunities to pursue happier life for all class one comes from. In The American Dream: A Biography, Jon Meacham constructs his thesis from a history perspective. He argues that "to recover the Dream requires knowing where it came from, how it lasted so long and why it matters so much." While our economy have gone up and down countless times and whatever role the government have played throughout the history, our lives is always getting better. When it comes down to how to recover the dream, we should rely on ourselves. We are the ones who make our American dream come true.

         However, in Rethinking the American Dream, David Kamp tries to present what is the right interpretation of American dream. As time goes by, the meaning of American dream keeps getting shifted and recalibrated. From Adams' interpretation to conflating extreme success, we keep rising our expectation on the American Dream so that it seems harder and harder to achieve. After all, he concludes that "the American Dream should be embraced as the unique sense of possibility that this country gives its citizens--the decent chance, as Moss Hart would say, to scale the walls and achieve what you wish. 

My 20s

Sorry I am late due to technological problem.

         

             “Emerging adulthood” coined by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., defines nowadays a life stage  between adolescence and adulthood. It is a transition to adulthood where we can take all responsibilities an adult should take. During the “emerging adulthood”, we face many changing variables, instability, and all kinds of possibilities that could happen to us in our 20s. In fact, we got a lot to look forward to before “the age 30 deadline.” Most likely, we positively believe that we will be who we want to be and doing what we dream to do. However, the sad truth is we don’t know what we don’t know. We have absolutely no idea about how hard just to live a life on our own.

            Often time, I feel confused and even lost when I think about the purpose of my life. When my dad was at my age, he can already make enough money to support his parents and siblings. He had already adventure to many places and done different businesses. Maybe back then he didn’t have choice but tough it out and simply just did it. Now, I am still nowhere near what my dad did at my age. One obvious reason is I have many options meanwhile those options are also big decisions that can form my foundation of the rest of my life. Me and my family also prefer to protect me from exposing to risks and help me make better decisions.