College thought on a sunny day

As the lecture-became-debate hopelessly, endlessly wages on, I carelessly glance out the window. Orientation student employees of some sort pass by, laughing and smiling as the sun bounces off the well-defined shoulders of their red T-shirts.\nThe girl has shoulder-length curling brown hair, khaki slacks and more white on her teeth than Darryl Strawberry's gums. The gentlemen wear identical short-cropped hair, one with a few tips dyed blond, indicating within corporate regulation that he's "hip." They sport matching khaki shorts and hundred-dollar sandals.\nAll four look like they've been at the HPER every day since their freshmen orientations. There's not a ripple of leftover body fat, a blemish on the dark-tanned skin or any justifiable reason to spend that much money on sunglasses.\nLet's get real. This public relations crap is really the first message we're conveying to kids when they make an investment in higher education? I know that knowledge isn't considered as important of a commodity as, say, designer sunglasses, but in today's fashion-first, fashion-last world, has it now become completely obsolete?\nIt seems that every time the Earth rotates on its axis I find a new reason to be glad I'm just a few weeks away from graduation. Not that I anticipate the world awaiting me is going to be honest and intelligent -- far from it, actually -- but just because I've put up with this crap too long.\nAll through elementary school, I hated it. I was bored. People told me high school would be better because it would challenge me and engage me. Well, they were wrong. High school was even worse than grade school. Not only were the lectures as inspired as a Segal plot, but the people couldn't go more than 10 steps without darting into the bathroom to check their hair.\nAnd what did my high school teachers tell me? "Just wait until college," they said. "It's a strong academic environment. It will be challenging, but also engaging and ultimately rewarding."\nSure.\nI do appreciate all the off-campus lessons college has given me -- without them, I could not be who I am today. But inside the classrooms, it's still the same kids I graduated grade school and high school, with. The names change, but that's all.\nMy mom once told me I returned home after the third or fourth day of kindergarten and told her, "That was fun, but I don't think I want to go anymore." Well, here I am, getting ready to graduate college and not a thing has changed. Inspiring myself to go to class lately has been comparable to inspiring my cat to take a shower.\nI drift back into the lecture. Where are we? Is this going to be on the test?