Angry Graduate Wrote This Letter To His University. It's Hard Not To Agree With Him.

[taotzu]

148. I Definitely See Your Point

I as a recent graduate from high school in 1976 wanted to travel the world but came from a poor household. My father was a truck driver and my mother was a maid and they struggled to make things seem as though we wanted for nothing which we didn't. I knew that they could not afford to send me to college or afford my travel aspirations. I had always been taught to work for whatever I wanted and make my own money. After graduation I decided to enlist in the Navy because they would send me around the world and also pay me to do it. I enlisted for four years thinking that I would get out after my first enlistment but decided that it would become my first career being that after a twenty-year enlistment I would be able to retire when I was thirty-seven and still be young enough to have another career and have the money to afford an education. After retiring from the Navy I was able to acquire a scholarship from the Microsoft Corp. that paid for my computer engineering degree and then was hired at a private university as a Network Analyst where I presently reside and am ten years away from my second retirement. Too often young Americans are taught not to take ownership of their own lives and this I attribute to their parents who require nothing from them. They have been given everything and asked to do nothing in return. I have instilled this same ethic in my own children and both have no degree of higher education but have jobs that they love and afford them the lifestyle that they do not need to be in debt. I see the students come this university and they have Mercedes, Volvo's, and BMW's cruising without a care in the world because they have none and probably won't since they are entitled and will never understand the need of ownership. Then I see the poorer students who are putting forth their best effort while working and taking care of their families who are being crushed by the debt of their degrees or by just giving up under the never ending pressure. It comes down to knowing there needs to be something done by the parents, students, and higher learning but it starts with the parents and how they teach their children when they are growing.