Why are you here?

I am not asking a deep philosophical question (Why did you get created? What’s the purpose of life?) I’m being much more simple-minded. Why did you decide to go to college? Why did you decide to come to Ashland? What are you looking for?

First, a couple of non-answers

I sometimes have students who are here so they can play football and get into the NFL. If that’s you, you need a backup career plan. Yes, Ashland does send people to the NFL—about one every ten years. We sent one guy to the NBA too—back in the 1970s. You seriously need a career plan besides professional sports.

Every college, Ashland included, has a few students who are here to party. I don’t need to tell you that’s a waste of time and money, and party animals won’t be here very long. Grow up.

If you’re not here to learn something college-related, you need to shift gears fast.

Some good answers

I’m not passing judgment; all are valid and it’s completely reasonable to find yourself shifting from one to another as you work your way through your college career.

• Getting equipped for a particular job. When I went to the University of Akron after teaching in a community college for a few years, I knew I wanted to be better equipped as a teacher (and that an advanced degree would open options to other colleges). As I’ve asked around, many of my friends knew from high school that they wanted to enter a specific field, and college was the best way to get there. However, there are some pitfalls to be aware of:
  • At 18 years old, your experience of the world and of yourself are likely to be be limited. At this point in your life (summer before your freshman year), you may not have even heard of your perfect job. Be ready to grow and change your objectives.
  • The world changes. The specific job you are aiming for may not even exist in five years. My father went to college in the 1930s to study electrical engineering, and his specialty was electric street railways. By the time he graduated, trolley cars were dying; he spent most of his career in rural telephones, a field that didn’t really exist in 1938.
  • If you are here to learn how to accomplish a specific task, you may soon discover you are obsolete. Nobody programs computers in COBOL any more, but that used to be a big deal in IT courses. Nobody makes computer punch-cards any more either. Nobody in accounting does double-entry bookkeeping with items in red, black, and green ink, but that’s how we used to teach business majors.
• Making some money. It’s been a slogan since before I was born: “Go to college so you can get a good job.” There’s nothing wrong with this one, but don’t pick your future based entirely on paycheck. You could end up miserable. Years ago, one of my friends was an engineer designing weapons systems. He hated it, but he got into the field because it paid well. He hated spending his days making killing machines. Where was his heart and soul? Art—specifically pottery. He was dying inside.
• Exploring your options. I’m a great fan of trying several things before you settle on a major. When you signed up for courses, “Undecided” wasn’t an obvious possibility, so you got the idea that the decision you made in July 2022 will rule your life for the next 40 years or so. That’s just not true. There is absolutely no reason you can’t try out a philosophy course, an art appreciation course, or a history course. And there’s no reason you can’t change majors—just make sure to discuss things like this with your academic advisor. When my daughter was at Oberlin College, my father grumbled that it was “a terribly expensive way to learn French.” She didn’t stick with French. Today, she’s a very highly-respected Japanese teacher in the Dublin school system.

The bottom line

The real key to success here is to let Ashland University be Ashland University. If you came here just to learn how to accomplish a specific task (giving an injection or balancing a spreadsheet), you will miss a lot of the richness this place offers, both intellectually and socially. If you came here just to make more money, you will burn out (and you won’t be a very good employee anyhow).

One of my friends, the former associate dean of the College of Education at AU, says that too many education majors think they will just sit on the floor with the children and read Winnie the Pooh. One part of letting AU be AU is learning the depth and breadth of your field. There is more to being a nurse than holding people’s hands and giving out pills. There is more to exercise science than giving out footballs. If you allow yourself to go really deep into your field, it can be pretty exciting.

Stay flexible and grow beyond a “filling in the blanks on a test” approach to education, and you will do well.