Determine your purpose for going to college
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How do you choose and attain a college degree?
Part 3 in a series
Summary of Part 2: The college degrees that you can earn are a bit like "alphabet soup" - many and varied. As always, it comes down to what you need, what you want, and what you expect to do with the degree. We talked about the application of many of the degrees and in this article we'll discuss the motivation for earning one (or more).
Determine your purpose for going to college!
This might seem obvious, but to determine what sort of college degree you want to get, it's very important to decide what your real purpose in going to school is – give some thought to your values, your worldview (Worldview refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it. Is your glass half empty or half full? Are you religious, liberal, conservative - these all play a part and are useful to understand how YOU believe) and this will probably go all the way back to the question of what is your purpose in life? Interestingly, if you are older when you go back to school, you tend to have a decided advantage. Really? While you may have additional responsibilities that the average 18 year old does not, you also tend to know what you want in life. You have been doing something, and now you either want to climb that ladder, and you need a degree, or, you know for sure that you want a change, and you know what it is.
So what is your reason for going or returning to school? Most modern philosophers, psychologists and theologians argue that all people act more or less in their own interest all the time. This is called egoism, specifically psychological egoism – that even when we say that we are doing something for someone else, we are really doing it for what it does for us (like it might make me feel like a good person when I sell my possessions and give the money to the poor). At the same time, while pure selfishness has it's decided downside, if you better yourself, your family and friends will tend to benefit. All of this just to point out that a series of questions about what you are going to school for will almost always come back to this one thought process: “I'm doing this because I want to be more than I am, I want to leave a legacy and/or I feel that it'll be part of making me happy!” and you're pretty sure that a href="http://www.earn-degree.com">earning the college degree of your choice will somehow play a large part in accomplishing that goal.
Is Money your Motivation?
Give some thought to how earning that degree will really make you what you want to be. You might decide that you especially want to be able to have a family with a bunch of kids and supply them with everything that they could ever need; and you want to give your spouse amazing presents all the time, and take vacations all over the world. If this is the case, then you are going to have to find a job where the income is significant enough to support your lifestyle. This is important because for instance, while Mother Theresa and others like her, certainly helped thousands and left an incredible legacy, she only earned money at a subsistence level. So if large amounts of money is your goal, give specific thought to the job skills needed and whether they fit your personality - because while a teaching degree is honorable and much needed in our culture, you will not be sipping Mai-Tais on the beach in Fiji on a teachers salary.
Are you considering a very specific career?
Maybe earning potential isn't your primary goal, but there is a future outcome that is your goal: you want to be a writer or an artist or a musician. Well, studying your craft is what will bring you there, and sometimes that will probably mean getting a college degree, but sometimes it might mean dropping out and studying under a master somewhere. For the past several years, "American Idol" has become a phenomena - an example (perhaps a bit extreme) of not going the usual route of college but rather studying with a master. In realty, the whole "Idol" approach isn't so much of "studying" with the masters but rather being exposed to high level creative types and trusting that between them and a rather fickle audience that your talent will be recognized. The concept of studying with a master is an older but still excellent approach of an "apprentice" system - not always easy to find or set up, but very good. Often the graduate programs in areas like music are set up to specifically perfect your skills apart from academics.
On the business entrepreneurial side, look at Richard Branson for example. He founded Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic Airlines and is now worth 7.8 billion dollars. His bio indicates that he struggled as a student, due to having dyslexia, resulting in poor academic performance. He obviously went on to do amazingly well, but keep in mind that he is an exception rather than the rule. In fact, most of the best known and successful businessmen and women as well as thinkers and writers have earned college degrees and/or come out of specialized schools that honed very specific skills.
Other motivations? If money or a specific field of study is not your primary motivation, then what is? We'll continue this discussion of motivation for school in part 4 of the series.
About the Author:
Mark Whyte has taught Sociology for the last 7 years as an online college professor. He also owns and operates a website at packupthehouse.com
