Being College Dropouts (期中報告)

     Currently, there are about 8% university students who drop out of our education system intentionally in Taiwan. Despite all those different reasons of doing so, we Chinese society often consider such action irresponsible, or as simply put, bad. However, as we are living in this modern world with rapid changes, exactly why such decisions are made and where might these decisions lead us are becoming harder to say everyday.
      One of the most unfortunate reasons of why people are leaving colleges is to support their family financially. College tuition is not easily affordable for every family, so when encountering incidents like major illness of family members or sudden bankruptcy, students from such families are basically forced to drop school. Upon all the college dropouts, there are around 6.6% of students suffering from this very reason. Usually students who leave school this way will then get a job instead to support their own.
     
      Second, young adults in college are still very much vulnerable, and having friends who are bad influences around in such period of time will inevitably change a students path. Youngsters often seek senses of belonging and bonding to each other, and many can be easily convinced to care less about classes if that’s what everyone around is doing.
       Third, in some cases, there are students who are mature enough to know what they want for life exactly and are able to set a firm goal to reach other than going through college. Having a college degree won’t necessarily increase your abilities, as long as you have figured out which is the best way to take, learning inside or outside the school wouldn’t matters that much.

       There are also some effects for these reasons.
One, people can be judgmental when seeing an undergraduate even when you are doing it with good reasons, most of the time it’s hard for you to get a job as well. Although what matters should be what you can do but not which school you are from, the impression and comments of a college dropout is not likely to be improved anytime soon.

       Second, if you are one of those people who have decided that to reach your goal, it’s better to learn from the field but studying on the campus, than dropping out of university just might give you a head start. Students tend to lack professional work experience but have knowledge in only theory form; and in many career field, experiences are far more important than book theories. Without doubt, if you do get your head straight with strong motivations, gaining more experiences as early as possible will make you have advantages over others.

       Last but not the least, many students who quite school because of bad influences later become life times criminals due to the lack of both financial incomes and working skills.  Nevertheless, sometimes even when a college dropout do start out as an ambitious youngster, there are probably too much for a young mind to deal with. Since it is harder to get approval from others without owning a college degree, one can easily be deeply frustrated, then sometimes even give up on the path they drop school for and give up on themselves. If things do go down that road, there will be a huge potential of them turning into society underdogs and becoming criminals.

      There is no absolute good or bad when it comes to dropping out of college.  Of course people who do drop out might be facing some serious risks, but they are embracing different opportunities of life as well. It is like what they always say, “ It doesn’t matter how you get there, what does matter is what you can do when you get there.” As long as we do keep a positive attitude toward our lives and stay on the right track, whatever way we wish to learn and grow wouldn’t really hurt. And vice versa. After all, we are the one who actually get to decide who we want to be, not our school.