Why I'm Not Getting My B.A.: A Manifesto

      I have tried to take the well-worn path over and over. I've waited anxiously to hear from colleges and universities, and I've felt the surge of relief and shadow of pride that comes from acceptance. Afterwards, the real work would begin: fighting for scholarships, desperately scraping together funds from every cobwebbed corner.

      Yet time and time again, my debt-free policy has barred me from realizing my academic dreams. So, time and time again, I've tried to rally my resources. When one door remained firmly shut, I would settle for squeezing through any open crevice left to me.

       Today, a financial door remained closed. My history predicts that I ought now to be resignedly searching for a gap in the hedges. I should be crawling around, looking for some other way to join the masses, whether that be through a state university, online classes, or what have you. Today, though, the cycle just may have been broken.

       Much as I admire the college in question, today's disappointment has finally clarified the ridiculousness of my predicament. I want to learn. I want an intellectual challenge. I want to be pushed to become something more than I am. At the same time, I have clung to the idea that there is only one way to do that, and that way is to barter thousands of dollars and years of one's life on the off-chance of meeting one or two engaged professors along the way.

       As this final opportunity has been taken away, however, I have come to the following decision: I will not slave away, postponing a meaningful life and saving every penny I make over the next few years, just so that I can pay it all plus my time to some institution. I will not spend my youth in arduous labor for nothing more than the privilege of making a college rich. The myth of our society, that the vita beata can be bought for the price of hundreds of thousands of dollars and one paper certificate, is neither true nor tolerable.

      To achieve that to which I aspire, I need training. I know that. I know that I am woefully under-skilled and, more importantly, under-disciplined and under-passionate. I refuse, however, to bleed myself on the altar of the all-important degree. What we students are being asked to sacrifice is not just our wages but our time, our service, our passion, and our prime.
   
        The amount of money I have already given these institutions as part of my cultural homage is staggering. The amount of time and energy--which so easily might have been devoted to better causes--is by far a more terrible price. That ends today, dear reader. Whether or not I succeed in my goals, I will not continue to fall for the marketing schemes and the peer pressure of our age.


        An God wills it, I will find my own way.