Stream of Consciousness on Learning at the U

Boxed in:  That's how I feel a lot of the time when it comes to assignments and courses in general here at university.  It's just the same, old, repackaged gruel over and over and over again, no matter which course you take.  At first, one might offer something more interesting or stimulating than another, but, as it wears on and you juggle it with every other task that is set before you with every other class, it all blends together into the same tasteless sludge you've been gobbling up for the last four years (at least some course content can qualify as salt, giving some taste to the everyday potato porridge).  I'm sick of the structure of this place; it's not conducive to really learning.  All we're doing here is absorbing and regurgitating, again and again.  Yes, I know we learn things here...yes, I've learned things here... but how much of what we are taught do we actually retain and cherish and use.  What I have learned here is how to survive, how to get just the right amount of work done, how to stay under the radar, how to think in just the right way.  None of these are things that instructors taught me... I'm paying thousands of dollars to teach myself.  Sure, the instructors have been useful, they've been resources through which I have taught myself, but, except for a few superb examples, they don't directly influence my real learning process.  The subject matter -- what they actively teach me -- I could learn in books, probably easier and faster than I do in class.  It's the experience of how you do it, how you adapt and teach yourself, that is the really valuable stuff that university gives you.  If they really wanted to teach subject matter they'd condense it... make it fast, make it difficult, make it intense and focused.  Just do one or two course at a time at a highly accelerated rate, that's how to get people to engage and really learn, otherwise it's just a routine.  See, that little slip of paper we get that says "Bachelor of the Arts" doesn't mean we know any material, because we really don't.  As undergrads, we're not experts in anything but what we have actively pursued by ourselves.  What that slip of paper means is that we've gone through this experience and, hopefully, come out the other side wiser.  That's it.  Ten's of thousands of dollars for a a certificate of completion for a challenge that you may or may not have gleaned any useful wisdom from.  But, you have to have it, so here we are.  Maybe some of us still think we're here for certain subject matter, and in some majors, like the sciences or fine arts, we are.  But most of us are here to learn how to learn, and that's something you really have to teach yourself.  Get that through your head and you might actually get out of here without too much hassle and with something to show.  But if you're relying on trying to remember what that particular piece of subject matter was... well, good luck, but that won't take you much of anywhere.