College Applications Have Ruined America

I don't have a problem tooting my own horn (insert Bender from Futurama: "He toots it too much if you ask me! Woooooooooooo"), but I think I'm pretty good at a few things.  I'm not fantastic at anything, but I think I'm competent and passable at a multitude of things.  I would consider myself a jack of all trades and master of none, and that bothers me.

We have become a nation of people who fit that same description.  American craftsmanship is hard to find as its rare to find someone who takes one particular job and dedicates a lifetime to refining and perfecting it.  Some of this can be traced back to the "hippie" movement because children saw that lifestyle as the lifestyle of their parents and wanted to rebel against it but I think a large part of this blame goes to an unexpected cause - the American College Application.

What is drilled into every high school student who wants to get into a good college?  "Keep busy.  Do a lot of activities.  Try at least one sport and one academic activity - it will look good on your college application!."  It was a goal of mine in high school to have the longest list of clubs and activities under my name in the senior year book.  I wanted to blow everybody out of the water when it came to activities so I was in Debate, Forensics, ACE (Academic Challenge in some schools), Tennis, Marching Band, Jazz Band, Symphonic Band, you name it.  To me my self worth was based on what college I went to and the college I attended was directly related to how many activities in which I participated.  Ergo, my self worth was directly related to how many activities I had behind my name.  In an ironic twist of fate, I was actually so busy my senior year that I forget to turn in the form to the yearbook committee with all my activities so none of them were listed in my senior yearbook.  D'oh!

I, like many high schoolers, did WAY too many things and I wouldn't say I was particularly great at any of them.  I won awards in Debate and Forensics but wasn't the best.  I was a minor contributor to the ACE team and I honestly should have been kicked out of Jazz Band because I did not play guitar well enough to deserve to sit on that stage but to me it wasn't the quality of work that was important but the quantity and to some extent I still find that to be true.

We see this today still in high schools as the competition for college admissions becomes more and more competitive and in business where companies expect their employees to be versatile and knowledgeable in many different areas.  Employees must be cross-trained.  Everyone should know how to do everyone else's job just in case.  Great, so now instead of having 5 people who are experts at 1 job each I have 5 people who can half-ass their way through 5 different jobs.  It's not a race to be good, it's a race to be active and that's a huge problem for the country.  Everyone needs to be busy!  Until we can find a way to recognize people for taking the time to perfect an act rather just showing that they can multitask through a hundred different things, we'll continue the current trends of a decrease in the quality of American workmanship, an increase in the number of career jumpers, and an increase in high schooler deaths resulting from decisions made (like drinking too many energy drinks) in order to keep up with a rat race that targets participants younger and younger.

I don't regret my college choice by any means.  I think going to UVa was one of the best things that ever happened to me, but I regret that in order to do so I developed a mindset that valued quantity over quality and that that mindset has dominated my life for the last 15 years.  In an ADD world of GO GO GO, I want to stop stop stop.  I want to sit down and not just be competent at something but be really, really good at it.  The first step to breaking out of a pattern is to realize you're stuck in one in the first place.  That realization took me 15 years.  I hope the next steps don't take that long.