School Dazed

Don't tell my mama, but as for school, I'm feeling overworked and underpaid.\nSo, I'm resigning from my position as a student.\nI'm refunding my plane ticket home from the Philippines. \nIf anybody asks, I'll be selling mangoes at the bus terminal in La Carlota City, indefinitely. \nPlease don't try to stop me.\nBetween shoe shopping and eating star apples, I've been vibing to hip-hopper Kanye West -- a man who made himself, quite possibly, the most nationally-acclaimed quitter, as of late.\nA 16-hour flight of dissecting his words on the "College Dropout" joint, and I've finally "got the courage to drop my ass up out of college" (for the record, my situation, his lyrics). \nTruth be told, I'm actually a bigger fan of the CD's interludes than its tracks. And if I hadn't copped the bootleg version, I might actually be able to give credit to the cat I'll just call Sarcastic-Dude, who did the monologue:\n"… guys out here making money all these ways, and I'm spending mine to be smart. You know why? Cuz when I die, buddy -- you know what's going to keep me warm? That's right -- those degrees." \nCornell West might read this sarcasm as just another example of an anti-education sentiment among the hip-hop generation. But I thought Kanyeesi did a good job of forcing all us "college kids" to ask ourselves, "Why the hell am I here?"\nBecause when Sarcastic-Dude suggested "you pick up all those books you're gonna read and not remember, and you roll man …", the random individual cruising shotgun in the Neener (my car) laughed, no matter how deep into the school gig he/she was/is.\nAnd when I flipped it back to the track 14 interlude where Sarcastic-Dude says,"You'll come in at an entry-level position and … boy is that great! You get to take messages for the secretary that never went to college," we laughed again. \nEither you laugh or you cry, and I don't keep Kleenex in the glove compartment.\nIt seems like since our parents' job-seeking days, the finish line in the preliminary race to success has extended past high school diplomas and moved on to college degrees.\nSo the whole question of "to go or not to go" seems to have an obvious answer. Before we've even been fitted for high school graduation gowns -- we've applied to some university, gotten rejected, then accepted and picked out everything but shower shoes. \nCollege has become less of a choice and more like a default to high school.\nSophomores go home Thanksgiving break and have their granny's think a year and a half of "exploratory" studies has something to do with marine biology.\nFive semesters and 20 syllabi later, there's a good chance we won't remember the concepts behind Pavlovian conditioning, and even more depressing, the job market might suck.\nIt's all a gamble.\nBut before my mother uses her daytime minutes to curse at me in Tagalog -- I'm not dropping out of school. Yeah I know, you're shocked.\nBut after all the work my parents put into sending me to school, I feel it's the least I can do. On one hand -- I actually enjoy some of my classes. On the other hand, where else can you catch Spike Lee for free? \nAnd seriously, since I can't make beats like Kanye, and I'm no P. Diddy or Peter Jennings (other famous drop-outs), it's probably best I stick to this textbook learnin'.\nBesides, I think the point of Kanyeesi's criticisms was to get folks to think. His success is proof for the "different strokes for different folks" theory.\nPlus -- if Kanye really hated school that much, he wouldn't always be wearing those damn Louis Vuitton backpacks.