For many students pursuing higher education, college has been a synonym for success throughout their lives. A diploma wasn’t just a piece of paper, it was more or less a portal to the future.

As bills stack up and money runs tight, though, I find myself looking for a second job on top of the 18 credits and 24 hours a week I’m currently taking on, and some days I wonder why I’m doing all of this.
What good is college, and what am I really learning, especially when so many classes are cancelled each semester?And why do so many students rejoice when their classes are cancelled? It’s a waste of their money.

Last semester, I was enrolled in five courses, three of which were cancelled anywhere from three to five times, and the semester prior, one of my classes was cancelled seven times.
I can’t be the only student experiencing this, especially since I’ve already had two of my classes cancelled thrice this semester as well.

With costs averaging out to roughly $80 per class per day, the money definitely adds up. With just those four courses, $1,520 of my money was spent on classes that were cancelled for whatever reason.
Regardless of the money, class cancellations also result in a compression of course material, or even a removal of some course material, in order to get through the more “important information” before exam week.

Now, some professors forced to cancel classes due to extenuating circumstances did offer optional make-up periods for lost time, so that no material would be missed, and that was very helpful, but obviously most professors don’t have the extra time to give.

Students are too frequently losing out on an education that they are spending their life-savings on. They are leaving college with a mountain of debt and a piece of paper that says they survived four years at an accredited institution.

What that piece of paper doesn’t say is how much you actually learned, what grades you graduated with, and what your qualifications for a job are.

In the end, a student who graduates with all “C”s is going to have the same piece of paper as a student who graduates with a 3.89 GPA, and worked twice, or even thrice, as hard as them.

While I do think I have gained a lot of knowledge during my time in college, I also know that I taught myself quite a bit through taking on extra reading, doing some research on my own, and figuring out how to juggle work, school,and home while still having time for a little relaxation. Time that is shrinking every day.

Maybe that’s what college is about: learning to figure things out on your own, manage your time, and teach yourself the information that you think is necessary for the outside world and the job market you want to tackle. Maybe professors did me a favor by cancelling so many classes, because they forced me to decide what I wanted to learn before I graduate.

-Kayla Friedrich, Editor-in-Chief