Hands out for more handouts.

Richard Gerry Reporting from college:

I graduated with my undergrad degree from the University of Utah a million years ago. One year ago, I graduated from Cleveland State University with my Master's. That's right, I am awesome. But this post is not about that.

They keep hounding me for alumni money - both of them.

I went to the University of Utah for nearly 10 years and spent in the neighborhood of $40,000 to do so. I had no scholarships, grants or subsidies beyond what the state pays for all students (and that is sort of like a sale at a mall store - jacked up 50% so that a 50% sale seems like a lot of discount). I never really did well with grades until I found my major and did very well, but my GPA was so low from my younger years that I ended up with only a fair to good cumulative. Other graduates in the year I graduated could expect to earn around $20,000 a year in entry level jobs. No, I didn't get an engineering degree. That is why I can spell.

Cleveland State University cost $20,000 for a two-year degree ten years later. I also was given no financial support, despite applying for teaching stipends and research assistant positions. In this degree I was firmly at the top of my class. I graduated "high honors" with a 3.97 GPA (one A-....that bastard professor cheated me and if I ever see him again...Bam!!). Regardless, I was in the top 1% of my cohort and delivered a fucking stellar end project. At the defense I was asked to join the Urban PhD program and offered to work with the best and brightest that CSU had to offer (yea, it sounds wrong to me too, 'cause how bright are they?). I was at the top of the game. Still, No help; no free career placement services, no tuition kickbacks, no free books, key lanyards or a free pot of coffee in the hallway between classes. Nothing but opportunities to spend more of my money every time I turned around; Parking, bus/train passes, lab fees, field work fees, real-professor fees, computer fees, technology fees, recreation fees, student government fees, and $12 burritos in the food court...like money vacuums from all directions - and all sanctioned by the state legislatures, boards of regents, and the very student government that charge the fees.

It's not like this.

As soon as I graduated each, I started to get weekly glossy mailers, booklets and daily emails from the schools asking for alumni donations. The brochures show people proudly wearing knit sweaters in school hues, cheering on the team, smiling with friends, staring into the eyes of a romantic flame, or completely engaged in the professor's lecture (who rocks a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and sports a graying beard). This could not be further from the truth of what these colleges are like now days. Did alumnus that attended this school really have it like that? Did anyone at any time? If so, I would like to know where I went wrong. My college days were mostly disgusting as an undergrad.

It's like this.

Both the University of Utah and Cleveland State are filled with nineteen-year-olds that have no idea what life is like, and they're either blowing unconscionable amounts of easy student loan monies on Beats by Dre headphones and iPods/iPhones and liquor or they are working three jobs and look like they have not slept or eaten well in weeks. They all are having sex with each other. They do any drugs they can get. In short, they are figuring out how to be humans in the real world, which is a social function of college. A lecture by a real professor in undergrad classes is growing more and more rare as grad students take over teaching beginning courses to offset tuition expenses. None of the students could give two shits about the content of the lectures; they repeatedly ask "Is this on the test?" because that is all they know from attending public schools. They do not respect their teachers. If the professor dances around the question, you can see the student completely tune out and send a text message to whomever boffed them the night before (that are asking the same questions to their professors down the halls). The only bond the students have is similar to one that coworkers in the same company have. Because they all go there at the same time, they are on the same team. The team could be the Nevada Naked Nothings, and sure enough, they'd all be wearing N3 hoodies while they crowded around passing the pipe before a basketball game, getting their lungs full of school spirit. I hope that this is not the normal, but I have attended 6 colleges, observed classes in a few more and it was sadly the same in every one.

90% of the people around that desk are asking about extra credit because they were having sex instead of studying for  the test they just got back. The other 10 are trying to have sex with the 90% before the next test.

Our society in general has lost the ability to conserve, cut excess and restrict in lean times. We are used to things getting tacked on to our bills, and paying for things after we consume them on credit. This is why we as adults look at an alumni letter and consider it for a second, and think on those times when we were still drunk in our 9am class from the night before. We think of our youth, when we did not have responsibility and bills, slept around without consequence and lived life for real. We want that back and will pay now for what we spent before. We forget how shitty we usually felt, how socially awkward we were, how broke we were all the time and we forget that there is more to life than "what is on the test".

The alumni associations get from me what they gave to me when I was there. You can never go back.