I'm not a Historian

I'm not a historian, but I do wonder about the comings-about of a lot of things. Take for instance: college. How did college come to be what it is today? Few people continue to study what they set out to get their bachlors in, I feel like a great number of people from RPI and similar places actually come to dispise their undergraduate degree and frantically go on to search for happiness elsewhere. Also, it seems like you can bend and manipulate any sort of degree to "fit" into almost any job you want to get... I guess that's the nature of going to college to prove you "know how to learn", so then why are colleges and programs so strict with curriculum? Shouldn't universities take up an extremely free-form style for students to pick and choose from a variety of classes, take/learn whatever they want on their whim? And if you're some haughty, uptight university ho-ha I really don't care about whatever structured answer you would care to give me about heirarchies and order and ways of society/ the categorization we obsess over here in America.

I mean personally, I see our generations wildness and breakouts of the norm as a desire for some sort of change from the structures that have been set up for us... sure, okay, some of us will grow up to become arguing republican sons of bitches stripping the planet of materials for wealth, fame, and blonde hair, but aside from those people who are carrying on in a linear fashion, I believe a number of us younger people are looking for some sort of freedom.

Yeaaa hippie timeess... lol. But in all seriousness, while we are all still in this growing stage, why not change the form of things? Maybe we don't have to be so conventional all of the time... universities don't have to be so structured... our culutre as a whole could be more freeform... could this maybe help us rely upon and relate to one another in better ways? I feel like the structured form of things creates unhealthy competition... you are in this "place" that you want to stay in forever and any form of change brought upon you is the wrath of hell.... why not embrace change and movement in life? I understand there needs to be specialization... everything would fall apart without people knowing how to do certain things very well, but I don't know... I think there can be a bit more space left open for exploration. Looking back on Italy, I can't get over just how much better the lifestyle is over there. How different a day is for people in different parts of the world! We in American literally break our backs everyday for a paycheck, even people like me - who don't really care so much about the cutthroat money, but more about the happiness and finding something to do with myself/ survive enough to get a coffee everyday - are working our bones dry and left to the night to break out, drink and live in an unreality of drunken bliss. The Italians on the other hand seem to know who they are. They work and learn during the day, of course not without about 3-5 cappuchino/ice cream breaks and chatting galore... then they finish with their studies or at their desks and it's home to see the family. Not home to cry over the horrible grey wall you sit behind everyday, not to cry about the stupid uninteresting things you've learned in school, not to sit and read and write and struggle over the things you are trying to learn and love... not any of these horrible situations... not for the Italians, because once their day is done, it's done. And then they begin to live. And I'm not just using the word "live" lightly either.... I mean really they live. They form and hold onto their relationships, they converse - the essential mark of being human, they share stories, sunlight, and time. I really wish we could change and stop worring about being "Ameriiicaaaa" and just be us.

-c