Parents

They don't really know what it is that you do in school, just that you are going for an education and should have probably already graduated–"what's taking you so long anyway?" 

Their hopes for you are to become a doctor, a lawyer or maybe even a teacher because it's a good title and something that they can brag to the ladies at the checkout counter from the five and dime. 

Term papers, research papers or interviews with transcriptions "what is that?" they muse while trying to figure out the purpose of you doing any of the like. 

When you feel like changing your major into something else, talk it over with your friends or even your teacher because your "supposed" student advisor will only tell you what classes you should take with out even asking to see if maybe you already took them. It's an appointment that must be made weeks in advance because of their busy schedule and when you get to the door, before you even knock there is a note that says "running late…" and when your advisor does show up she scribbles down your RAN number on a piece of paper and tells you she has to hurry to get through the line that is out the door. 

OK yeah, whatever!

You study and study knowing that its just something that you have to do although your parents really have no clue what it is that you do in school, but they expect you to get a job as soon as May comes and graduation is done. With out even your diploma in hand they tell you to go job hunting because the competition is fierce (yes fierce, not their choice of words, but mine–vocabulary 101 =p) and "what are you going to be doing home all day anyways?" 

Sure, sure, sure. Send off your students to look for jobs or better yet, try finding one for them in what has nothing to do with their field but tell them to take it anyways because they need "experience", yeah it doesn't matter what kind just as long as you have it. 

So does that mean that if someone went to school for accounting, they should work at the human resource office downtown because they can learn a lot from dealing with cranky people all day with the common denominator that they are unhappy. 

I don't know, call me crazy but I just think that perhaps there should be some sort of break in between for students to really figure out what it is that they want so as to major in such and then not have the pressure of their parents soon after telling them to get a job because after graduation is when we really ask ourselves what it is that we really want to do for the rest of our lives. But of course this is a forbidden topic with parents who can't remember what we majored in and then will say "than why didn't you take that instead?" 

Oh joy oh great! 

The life of the perpetual teenager who is no longer an adolescent but a young adult still going through the same issues, or so I guess.

Are you going through it too?

-B.