College

My egghead best friend is all about college. He attended a fancy, expensive one (on an academic scholarship because he’s super smart) and thinks college is something young people should do.

He told me this during a guys’ trip centered around a B1G Money Conference college football game. We’re meganerds, so we focused way more on the academic parts of college than the football parts. He thinks I’m a dope because I’m mostly about the football but not the academics.

I’m not anti-college. I’m just not pro. I get that if you want to do certain jobs, you need college. But unless you need college for a job you’re thinking about, I’m not about defaulting to going. Instead, I’m about defaulting to living with your mama for a couple of years if that’s an option, reading some spirituality books, practicing yoga, getting healthy, finding your sweet spot, and getting a job or starting a YouTube channel or something so you can have some money to pay mama some rent. 

As Old Kanye put it, “Drive slow, homey.”

I’m all about getting an education. I’m just not all about college. Or even regular school, for that matter. At least the way they do it now, where they make kids sit around all day and do extra work on the stuff they’re not talented at and will never use in real life instead of nurturing their talents and teaching practical stuff they’ll find useful.

When I told my egghead friend I wasn’t even pushing my kids to graduate high school, he shook his head, rolled his eyes, threw an energetic penalty flag in my face, and went back to talking about college. My man thinks I’m jiving about the high school stuff, but I’m not.

My friend said he’s about defaulting to college because it’s the best place to get facts, information, and knowledge, which we need way more of these days when everyone’s megaduper down to tell lies all the time. 

I told him that I’m not about defaulting to college because it’s not the best place to get wisdom, which we need way more of these days to discern Truth from all the lies told everywhere, including college. It’s no secret that the winners get to tell the story of how it went, which is why half the stuff we humans call truth is actually trash. College is no citadel of truth, and is full of lies whitewashing how things really went. They be lying at college all the time and don’t even know it.

Egghead wasn’t buying that one, and the discourse reached the point of diminishing returns when I told him I get way more Truth from squeezing my butt cheeks together and holding a crystal to my forehead for four minutes than I got from doing college for four years.

We agreed to call each dopes and went back to doing smart stuff like watching football.

There’s nothing wrong with college, but it’s aimed at advancing a society organized around money, so I don’t rock with it as a default setting. I’m about organizing society around love and light, and I believe mama’s house is a way better place to get a proper education to prepare for that than college.

But Plato’s Republic, or, as the philosopher 2Pac calls it, Thug Mansion, is yet a ways off. 

We still live in a cash money world, so college is at least useful for learning some cash money dance moves. The next time a young person asks me whether or not to go to college, I’ll probably suggest they enroll in a community college class or two to see how they like it.

But only if there’s money left over for tuition after paying mama the rent.