Are We Actually Learning Anything Anymore?

[mickiewaiss]

I’m a junior at a state school in Ohio, and lately I’ve been wondering if college has quietly shifted from education to performance. Between juggling two part-time jobs and five classes, I spend more time calculating points than absorbing ideas. Professors quote Malcolm Gladwell and throw around stats about the 65% of jobs requiring degrees by 2030, but no one talks about burnout. Has anyone figured out how to focus on real learning instead of just surviving deadlines and GPA pressure?

[lindamacey]

I graduated from a university in Chicago in 2019, and I remember sitting in the library during finals week realizing I hadn’t read a full book cover to cover in months. I was gaming the syllabus. I knew exactly how many discussion posts I could skip and still pull an A-. That scared me. When I interned in Washington, D.C., my supervisor didn’t care about my GPA. She cared whether I could think clearly under pressure. That’s when I stopped obsessing over grades and started protecting my attention. I used AssignmentPay once during a brutal semester, and I won’t pretend I didn’t search essay writer help online at 2 a.m., even typed Write My Paper into Google out of panic. But long term, what saved me was choosing two classes each term where I actually did the reading deeply, even if other courses got bare minimum energy. College isn’t pure anymore, but you can still carve out real growth if you decide what deserves your brainpower.