Liberator Magazine :: Art, Culture, Education, Politics, Truth...

"Graduating [from college] is overrated," my friend told me the other day. And as a 2005 graduate, I agree.

Graduating from a college or university does not magically pimp your life. Oftentimes after graduation, there is no full-time job with benefits waiting for you. (I am currently unemployed.) There may be no keys to the perfect apartment in the perfect neighborhood with your name on it. (I am currently living with my parents.) And after you graduate from college with a degree, it is almost certain that you will look back and mourn the losses: friends, family members, significant others and incredible amounts of money. (I can certainly attest to this.)

Graduating from college is overrated. But, after much reflection, it is my understanding that the college experience inside and outside the classroom, which ultimately culminates with a degree, is not overrated.

I chose to attend college because I hate rejection. Though the career path that I have chosen may not require a college degree, I certainly believe in devising backup plans. I believe that I deserve the best because I am the best. Therefore, I want access to the finest employment and educational positions. I chose to attend a historically black college because I believe in the importance of indulging in the study of self. Where else could I have taken a course titled, "Black Women in America?"

Even so, for decades Black college graduates have had to face criticism of "acting white," or "losing their blackness" in their quest for academic achievement. W.E.B. DuBois wrote about it in the classic, The Souls of Black Folk in a chapter titled, "Of the Coming of John." In the chapter DuBois asserts that newly learned Black folks often offend and confuse their communities, knowingly and unknowingly, because of the total impact education has on them. The most noticeable change for John’s little sister in the chapter is the exchange of education for an attitude of unhappiness.

It is certainly true that ignorance is bliss. The reactions to John in the chapter are often the same ones that Black college graduates receive today. Ample support comes from church and other members of the community, but there are those who still sing their refrain, "College is not for everyone." Yet, how can we expect to play the game without the proper equipment and a uniform?

I have kept seen and unseen rejection at bay during the beginnings of my budding journalism career. After my sophomore year alone, I had three offers to work as a summer intern at newspapers in three different states. My options of course, afforded me the opportunity to take position at the newspaper with the highest circulation and readership among the three newspapers: the Chicago Sun-Times. The next summer, I took advantage of two journalism opportunities, one with the New York Times Student Journalism Institute and another with the Chicago Tribune.

However, life at an HBCU was not the story line from the Cosby spin-off, "A Different World." My challenges were many: homesickness, identity issues, academic success, (self-inflicted) financial setbacks, and even heartbreak. Surmounting these obstacles was easier when I thought about my personal goal of bridging the gap between those educated in institutions of higher learning and those educated on the streets. With my accomplishment comes a responsibility to lead the way for my family, my community, and my people, which cannot be ignored. The degree I have earned is shared by so many whose lives and sacrifices have paid for my four years of college in more ways than one.

Earning a degree is especially significant for people of color because racism continues to prevail in our society. Under the tenants of racism, people of color are inferior, unqualified, unequal, and certainly un-free. Black people have only been considered five fifths human for less than 200 years! The full impact of earning a degree is an accomplishment that perhaps could never be expressed through words by my grandparents who were denied the chance because they were either women, too Black or too poor.

The obstacles I have overcome within and without are reminiscent of Frederick Douglass’s words. Douglass wrote, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground..." He continued, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." Since when and where I enter, the entire Afro-American race enters with me, the degree I have earned has improved my people’s position in our collective struggle for freedom and equality. I have been equipped with reason, determination, and the rest of the tools necessary for challenging the status quo.

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