Ahhh college... birds are chirping, quads are overflowing with frisbees, and a $200k piece of paper can be yours in just a short four years. It's the price you have to pay for a good education and a career in a field of your choosing. The problem any student shortly finds out is that a job, let alone a career, is not necessarily a guarantee. College seems like a magical place where nothing bad can happen until you're a senior about to be thrown into the wolves (aka me).

Most of us aren't lucky enough to have a wealthy background or a fluke get rich quick scheme so we ship ourselves off to college (or up to Boston in my case) and try to give ourselves a future. The problem is, you need money in order to get money... does that make sense? According to College Board, the average cost of tuition fees in the United States for the 2015-2016 school year were $32,000 for private colleges, and anywhere between $9,000 and $24,000 for public colleges based off of being an instate or out of state resident.

So as you can see, it's the biggest investment an 18-year-old could make and at that age we can't even drink let alone decide what we want to do for the rest of our lives. So you fly through those first few years, making friends, going to class (maybe), and not really taking into consideration those big numbers because you know it'll be fine when you get a job after graduation. But that's the big kicker about going to college; you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

There's a vicious cycle when you send that application in and it starts immediately. It starts when you sign off on a hefty student loan to pay your way through long lectures hoping to learn something about the 'real world'. But most classes are just like any other filled with data, memorization and extensive thesis statements. To learn 'real world' stuff you have to go out into the 'real world' but in order to get a job you need experience. And here's where it becomes vicious because experience is next to impossible when you're stuck in that three-hour seminar. About a week ago, I went into a marketing firm to interview for an intern position. Somewhere along the way I was asked why I wanted this internship and instead of giving a lame "I just really like marketing" response I told her this; I said, in order to get an entry level job we are all expected to have 3 years of experience at said job, which doesn't make sense considering it's entry level and we're fresh out of the womb. I told her that working as an intern, probably unpaid, you gain that experience and even though it doesn't get your foot in the door, at least it's a pinky toe. I also said that marketing was not my field but it's close and everyone needs a writer on their side to assist with the brand (see previous article).

So in order to get a job, you need experience, which is impossible without a job, that you need to go to college for, but you need money for college, so you take out loans, that you need to pay off, and you need a job to pay them off, but you can't get a job without going to college, so if you can't go to college because you don't have the money, you're screwed just as much as the kids who are walking around with a 5 figure debt on their shoulders. *rant over*

It's not impossible to get a job after college, that is a given. The hard part is using that pretty piece of paper to get a career. I know plenty of post-grads who have jobs but it's not what they want. They're still getting paid, yes, but they may not necessarily like what they're doing. If you wait around for a job you want in your field, it could be forever and you have rent, bills, car payments, student loans, etc. to pay while you're unemployed. What a lot of people in the education and employment system don't understand is that walking across the stage with a degree doesn't make everything magically appear for you right afterward. So having at least a year of experience for an internship is a little ridiculous of a request for a 21-year-old.

This should not deter you from getting a higher education and this certainly doesn't prove that college might be a sham, it's more of an eye-opening factoid that everyone already has an idea of. It's incredibly hard to be a college student when you're not surrounded by solo cups and togas. *Disclaimer: I have never been to a toga party but they're in the movies so it must be real, right?* Anyway, if you're not the lucky one to have a life set up for you after school, college is definitely a step up from where you are. So don't let that scary pile of debt tell you, you can't go because you won't get a job, just tell it to chill out because you're trying your hardest.