A lot goes into a young adult successfully launching out into the world. Some of us had to wander blindly on our own; infinitely confused by what was present in our experiences and upbringing. In these cases kids do their best to direct themselves through childhood and prepare for the real world. But the truth is some kids go without crucial, fundamental things that ground a person in the world. These might be steady nurturing, healthy experiences, forming of healthy attachments, confidence, etc. But when these things are missing, additional privileges can be stacked on add infinitum without much positive gain. This is a most frustrating thing to all involved. In my case, male gender, caucasian-ness, education, opportunities, adequate funds... these things could never supplement basic human development. To people outside looking in, the foundational things are invisible-it's the added opportunities that are what is visible to onlookers. They follow by scratching their heads, mystified with why life is not thriving. Their common response is to find fault with the individual, which only makes the situation worse. One is not working hard enough, one is too thin skinned, entitled... etc. But the foundation of the person, started years ago, is what it is. And that is, one that is very creaky- something slapped together with whatever was at hand.

In such a situation, a college education can easily not lead to the success in life that society promises it will. This is a most painful and frustrating scenario. But the truth is that some of us are simply unprepared for life at a fundamental level. And one does not truly know that one is unprepared until after leaping into school. It is only then, post-leap, that the lifelong remedial education to try to supplement what was missing begins. In some cases it is too late to learn some things, but in most cases, it is just very hard. Successfully launching out into the world and finding footholds has to do with the person that the years and experiences have shaped. This starts with the most fundamental experiences at home. Any academic qualifications or experiences are contingent on this. Although I did not experience it, I understand that if preparedness is present, academics and training can help. What I do know is that if there is anything in our world that dangles the carrot and expectation of successful thriving life more than a college education, I don't know what it is. And I know that if that expectation falls short, the result is the most excruciating suffering.

This scenario makes folks like me vulnerable to colleges. We are woefully unprepared for the game. And we and are easy marks. I feel very strongly that many colleges take advantage of the societal view that a degree is the special ticket into the world of careers and thriving adulthood. In retrospect I have come to believe that naive kids like I was are the bread and butter of many colleges and student loan companies. The fact that [most] colleges are money making organizations is tragically downplayed in the public narrative. My family, my high school guidance counselor and most of those around me viewed a degree as a sort of golden ticket required for entry into life. What no one understood is that despite the academic records being there, the lack of "life prerequisites" made us very vulnerable to the college machine.

I chose to seek an education in Liberal Arts at The Colorado College. Egged on by the culture of the institution, I pursued what was interesting and engaging. I took classes like "Morality and War," and "The Bible as Literature." I was naive enough to believe, despite not knowing where my education was leading, that "Chinese Meditative Arts," "Indian Philosophy" and "The Miles Davis Years," were preparing me for something. The classes were very rigorous and required a lot of effort. The Colorado College, or CC, operates on "the block plan." This means a 3 1/2 week intense focus on one class at a time. It was an intense blitz of work. Books were assigned one day, papers the next; midterms were within two weeks and finals were within four. I liked the block plan, focusing on one class at a time. I felt that it cut down on distraction. But in retrospect I feel that this led to my not developing the very necessary skills of multi-tasking and shifting priorities required in professional positions.

There is another way that liberal colleges can mislead students-an anti-establishment, intellectual rebellion against the very system that these institutions are rooted in. This is misleading. I was already headed in this trajectory but through the content of the courses and the environment at CC I developed an even more anti-establishment, anti-capitalist leaning. These qualities are typical of intellectual culture of many colleges but they work against preparing students for the world. I cannot emphasize enough just how misleading this can be and just how lost this can make a person. In my case, I did not see where my liberal arts education was leading me. Over and over I was told that a BA from The Colorado College would provide the critical thinking and well-roundedness that would prove to be very valuable in the world.

Confused by all this and realizing that I was on a train to nowhere, I took a year off, worked manual labor and service jobs in a mountain town a few hours away. I tried to become clearer about what to do. But all that became clear was that I did not want the life of a restaurant worker without a car, walking in the snow, slaving for pennies and sharing a room to get by.

So I returned to CC for my junior year. As I was required to choose I opted for a major in Religion. I guess I did this because I found it fascinating. My reasoning was that unlike the "mental masturbation" of philosophy, I saw religion as "belief put into practice." I did not, however, have plans to become a minister. Unlike almost everyone around me, I did not understand that graduate school, or law school, or something, was a required next step to really make anything from my education. It was only decades later that I learned the state of things, through the painfully poignant banter of Click and Clack of the radio show Car Talk. Through their harsh banter I learned, too late, that the likely trajectory of an Art History major (or other "interesting" Liberal arts major) is flipping burgers and moving back in with their parents. I feel very strongly that at CC I and others were coddled (by people acutely aware of the system) into a misunderstanding of the world that offered the benefit of filling their coffers.

I visited the career counseling department sparingly and it didn't seem they had much in the way of resources at the time. Most importantly, in that office I felt a huge disconnect. The office existed as a half-baked bridge between the "interesting" world of my classes and professors and the "real world" of the want ads. The culture of the college, my classes, professors and materials, had everything to do with this gaping chasm. The abodes of academics are sometimes referred to as "ivory towers." These high and mighty folks in robes are cloistered off from and looking down upon society. And if we students sweat and strive enough, we just might get the green light from them. Not knowing what else to do I blindly soldiered on. I bristled at the rigorous academics; the constant judgment and evaluation that I had to contend with in pursuing my degree. The college environments that some friends of my mine were in, such as at UC California, seemed lax and easy compared with what I had to do. These friends could skip classes, delay doing work, not be noticed in class- and still get A's. Not at CC. This was ironic, as the UC schools required higher marks to gain entry into, and were known and respected by employers. Despite the rigorousness of study at the Colorado College, very few people that I met outside of Colorado Springs seemed to have even heard of it.

Anyways, I saw the effort through and graduated. Never in my wildest nightmare could I have known how absolutely useless I would experience myself and my BA from the Colorado College to be in world. With all that effort, time and money, I didn't come out with any recognizable, practical training for the world I was trying to enter into. I had been so desperate, so blinded by the promises of college, I was left to deal on my own with a mountain of anger and shame. Fooled and foolish. Not what you expect a college to do for you. These feelings grew with time and with the ghostings and rejections from potential employers and job applications. It took many years to own that, actually... my college education had not provided any specialized skill to offer the work world.

Additionally, "soft skills" of the work world were also missing. All the reading, all the writing, all the rigorous debates, a grounding in the liberal arts... none of these were valued. And It could not be more evident how unprepared for the world of resumes, applications, interviews I was, not to mention skills, filters and compartmentalization required of to navigate in "professional" environments. People didn't want critical thinking, they wanted "can do" kool-aid drinkers ready to present a spin and take one for the team. Each year there was less and less steam to send those applications and to risk that rejection. No one saw the potential in me that I did, potential that I had been led to believe would be fulfilled. Therefore my vision of it faded exponentially with each year.

I worked horrible job after horrible job. I was surrounded by people less intelligent and less educated by me. Nothing I had learned or had come to value seemed to be present in any job I had. Life was not turning out as I had hoped. Back in school I had had no idea that had been the time to be participating in internships and in job preparation. I had assumed college was doing that. Therefore there were no doors offering entry into fields that interested me. The beliefs that had been hammered into me, that work would be principled, rewarding and challenging, fulfilling and interesting, had nowhere to land. The real world confronting me was the one my fellow students and I had been trained to expose holes in.

When the world tells you the answer is to work and earn a college degree, and said degree does not deliver, it cannot be overemphasized how painful the experience is. You end up with only yourself to blame for the results. Every graduation speaker, every cheerleading speech given by our commander in chief about the promise of the college education, is salt in the wounds.

It is high time someone draws attention to the fact that neither a college, it's degrees, nor all the financial, time and energy costs associated with these, are the golden ticket they are presented as. Some of us need the fundamental education we never received at home. And there are practical considerations and strategies youngsters need to be very clear about before they even approach college. Government should be mandated to educate the populace... about education! And about student loans! Government, or parents at least, should make it clear that the promises and marketing language of colleges are sale-pitches that are not necessarily based in fact. Most importantly, my experience taught me that what students will walk away with from a college mostly has to do with what they walked in with. This is the opposite of what is presented and can be catastrophic for students.

My hope is that someone early in their life will read this and go on to become be more informed and prepared. A percentage of them, like me, will need to supplement what they were brought up with, before even approaching college. My hope is that they will also be better prepared for the pitches of academic entities with blind support from the establishment. Folks considering college need, as much as they are able, to do their critical thinking before entering. A fundamental part of this is recognizing what the developmental shortcomings were in the home. What do they need to supplement these and how can they go about that? What is their planned trajectory in college? What is the health of the career sector they are targeting? What is the reputation of the college for preparing people for that field? What are the practical skills that a college will not provide and how do they plan to gain these? Financially, do the costs justify the potential gains? Lastly, consider the factor of the location of the education being very relevant to targeted jobs. Where are those jobs concentrated? Is your college known by those employers? Back home in California, when I said I went to The Colorado College, people thought I was referring to the infamous state party institutions at Boulder and Ft. Collins. My college had a good ranking on the lists but with my boots on the ground in California... no one had even heard of it.

It is reckless to continue a societal narrative that college is the answer or that colleges are even competent or looking out for students. Although I have not experienced this, I have heard that college can be helpful. But everything will always come second to basic human development and how you come to be as a person in the world. Like learning a language, human fundamentals are best learned at an early age. If they are not, the learning curve in trying to meet these is a lifelong one. Society would do much better to provide resources to address these deficits than to blindly flap the flags of academic institutions while sidestepping the fact that these are also businesses. The Colorado College was great at teaching me critical thinking. However, I do not think they intended me to apply it to them. The dreamy catalogues that they send me, attempting to rekindle nostalgia and donations, go straight where I feel they belong. The trash can.