With my first homecoming as an alumna around the corner, I have begun to reflect on my time at Winthrop, and if all of the Starbucks–fueled late nights spent stressing over a project I should’ve started two prior actually prepared me for the “real world.”
The short answer is, kind of.
When I first asked myself if I felt Winthrop prepared me for “real” adulthood, my first thought was that it had. I was able to find a job in my field within a month of graduation, a job I am actually doing well at due to things I learned at Winthrop, like how to work well with groups of people (even though some of them don’t do any work and still try to put their name on the final project) and how many places I can use my not–yet–expired student ID at. I also learned the boring stuff, like how to communicate, the technical skills of my field and how to take critiques. I am doing work that I enjoy and that pays enough for me to afford rent, the Millennial American dream, but I still feel overwhelmed at the thought of navigating the adult world.
I realized Winthrop prepared me for getting a job, but it did not prepare me for the rest of adulthood.
I have had to do a lot of self–teaching about some pretty important adult life topics post–graduation, like how taxes work and what a state attorney general does and all the different types of insurance you need. I haven’t used the knowledge that Martha Graham was the mother of modern dance, but I have had to Google what a 401k is.
Not to mention the fact that college doesn’t emotionally prepare you for the adult world. Living hundreds of miles from friends you lived down the hall from for four years sucks. Plus, ordering Dominoes three nights a week and getting Starbucks every morning isn’t acceptable in the adult world, especially since I can’t even use cafe cash for them any more.
Seriously, why didn’t college prepare me for the cost of moving to a new place? Or the hardship of making new friends as an adult? Why didn’t I learn about office etiquette or fostering client relationships? It’s assumed that some of these issues are just life lessons that you learn along the way. But a lot of people have already learned these lessons, and they could probably teach them to us poor unsuspecting, unprepared souls.
I am not saying that college is useless or that what you learn in the required three science classes and 18 cultural events isn’t important, but maybe the way classes are taught needs a little updating. The reason I was prepared for the working adult life is largely because of experiences outside of the classroom. I learned how to navigate new and unfamiliar experiences during a short term study abroad, I gained leadership experience helping plan my senior show, I learned how to communicate working for The Johnsonian and The RMR, I learned problem solving through internships and on campus jobs, I learned how to work in groups as president of WUHA and I learned how to network through events with professional organizations. For all the learning I did outside of the classroom, I can’t help but feel that I did a lot of time not learning in classrooms. I don’t think things like requiring everyone to take a math class and CRTW should change, but I think core classes should integrate real world lessons into the curriculum. Include lessons like “Taxes 101,” “How to Not Screw Up Your Finances,” “How to Move to a New Country,” or really just “How to Survive Out in the World” into common core classes to better prepare students to be adults and reduce the number of poor unsuspecting, unprepared souls.
In the end, I think Winthrop prepared me for working and has definitely catapulted me into this whole adulting thing, but to all soon to be grads, just remember: none of us really know what we are doing.
Contributor: Kristin Streetman
