Self-sufficiency is becoming a lost art

Date published: 11/20/2008

DURING A RECENT con- versation with a friend, it dawned on me that being dependent on college-campus comforts poses a more sinister threat than thriving corporations or students with empty pockets.

People who leave their parents' house only to go straight into an every-need-catered-to college living situation are in no way being equipped to deal with life on their own. These same people often go straight from college to the corporate world, and a life where everything is prepared and prepackaged for their easy access.

The idea, I suppose, is that these are the people who are going to get educated and then go into a specific profession, so they will have no need for knowing how to wash a dish or prepare a meal. Those jobs are left for the working-class, blue-collar people who are there to prepare things for the "highly educated."

Take an average day in the life of a dorm resident with a meal plan: He wakes up, goes to eat at the cafeteria, grabs some sushi for lunch from a store on campus and gets Subway for dinner. He then returns to his heated dorm room, takes a shower in the bathrooms that are cleaned by janitors and then goes to sleep.

This bears a striking resemblance to the life of a corporate employee. It is perfectly common today for people never to eat at home and, instead, to get all their meals on the go or in the form of microwavable TV dinners. Sleeping is then done in an apartment building that is cleaned and maintained for the renters.

As long as those with "good" jobs maintain their skill, everything else in life will be done for them. In countries such as Japan, it is even more common for everyone to live in tiny, sterile apartments, simply fulfilling their roles as consumers.

Granted, people want to be in academia and learn a skill--and because they are doing this, they don't necessarily have time to make a huge, home-cooked meal every day, work outside in the garden and keep their houses clean.

Date published: 11/20/2008