And the onus to survive and thrive involves nothing else but my own will.

I suppose it could be said that every civilian lives this form of solitary exposure. No one has any promise of survival, let alone success, and therefore must very early on choose to pursue self-interest as an avenue to personal fulfillment. Or else flounder. And that makes my new life here in South Korea feel, sound, and even taste all the more harrowing and enlivening.

No matter how much people may want to help, I am flying by the seat of no other set of trousers than my own. I pray they aren’t the wrong pair.

*          *          *

As I settle in, I hope to post more often about life as a foreign teacher of English. With any luck, the posts won’t be about my deportation.

People are quick to drop the platitude that college isn’t for everyone without ever refreshing it with an explanation. It is often found in conversations about students who do poorly—or fail miserably—during their college careers, and is meant as an earnest consolation. But because there is no clarifying information as to how it applies to the individual spoken of, the sounds of those words, “college isn’t for everyone,” waft away like last semester’s syllabuses.

But why should they waste time clarifying anything? Isn’t common sense enough to fill in the gaps? Everyone has a different set of aptitudes, and not every set contains one for intellectual pursuits. Obviously. But what isn’t said is that intellectual pursuits are not meritorious in and of themselves. They are not superior ipso facto to pursuing religious fulfillment, or a hard-to-find carburetor that would complete a father/son rebuild.

Yet people insist on believing that intellectual professions inherently require an elevated intelligence, and, as such, those engaged in them are inherently intelligent, and, as such, superior.

The Essence Of Regimented Adolescence

I just spent the better part of my thirties living full-time with college-aged kids—two years of which in a dormitory—and I can say with certainty that a large majority within the pool of adolescents entering the intellectual repository known as college have no business being there.

Moreover, a large majority of professors, as well, have no business being there.

I also learned that a large majority of that large majority of adolescents can benefit from a college environment that incorporates more than lecture, and less than freedom. Many that I met and lived with thrived by having a regimented day beyond the soft obligation to show up to class. They were cadets—some, like myself, without military obligations.

This isn’t to say that all students will benefit from such regimentation. But all who did participate, matured at an unprecedented rate, and ended up far beyond their civilian counterparts. Even relics like myself will have a healthy dose of maturation wedged into their calcified characters.

The Staining Stigmata Of Carpentry

This country wouldn’t have so many under-qualified professors if the current political climate didn’t work so hard to convince us more college is the answer: the lower on the bell curve colleges set applicant requirements, the lower on the bell curve professors themselves will necessarily fall, not to appear co-equal with the students, but simply to meet the demand for more professors.

This country has a ballooning population of underprepared matriculants, and institutions are afraid to challenge them. Just read USA Today’s report regarding the uselessness of the first two years of college. Part of the issue is that universities are trying to be institutions of higher learning and vocational schools without drawing a distinction.

This may be the only way they can meet the social demands of matriculating more students without staining students with the stigma of a “lowly trade,” like Building Construction (as is one major at my Alma Mater, Virginia Tech).

The Courage To Blog

College is not for everyone, that is certain. But character development is. The obstacle, however, is creating educators that have character, understand character, and have the courage to administer lessons in character.

In this, my revamped blog, I will explore what I observed as a “non-traditional” undergrad at Virginia Tech, and document what I will learn as an ESL teacher in South Korea. With a little luck, and a lot of backbone, I hope to demonstrate that the character development I attribute to my time as a cadet has indeed manifested, and that I have the courage to educate my future students to weigh their educational options equally—without regard to uninformed social pressures (while allowing for the informed sort).