College and EX-JW Discontent....Questions and Stats (page 6)

Luther bertrand

Though extermely hard I finished College with a double major and was fading at the same time. I had to hide my books and keep secret my homework, while working and raising two kids! It was hard but possible.

rebel8

13-year-old thread! But the OP was interesting. Perhaps the taboo on college made everyone believe they personally missed out on it even when they may not have.

Freeandclear

I was a straight A student in HS, I scored exceptionally high on my ACT test and was an Honor Society member in school and graduated 8th in my class out of 350 students. I was not born in, but rather got the "truth" when I was about 17. I was very naive and completely convinced it was the truth.....needless to say I rejected all ideas of higher education and decided to get baptized and pioneer. I had a full ride offered to me by MIT and I wholly rejected it because of my false beliefs.

As it turned out, I made out okay. I have a good job and my own side business that I made all on my own, so financially I'm fine. But I do regret not having the typical college life and awakenings that most "worldly" people go through and which I feel are a natural part of human development, ie. the social introductions, the parties, the fraternizing freely with the opposite sex, the experimentation, all of it. Due to that I always felt like I missed out on something big, something very important in life. And as such, a couple of years ago when I kind of went off the deep end and decided to finally explore all of that stuff NOW as a full grown adult man. Some would say mid life crisis (I'm 44 now) and in the process I made some really bad mistakes due to my own naivety. I'm okay now but I put myself through a lot of unnecessary pain and misery for a bit, actually I guess due to the lessons learned it may have indeed been necessary but who knows? If I'd had the chance to do these things when I was younger I think my life would have turned out somewhat differently. Perhaps for the better.

I don't actually regret the decisions I made when I was younger, or any decisions I have made, I own them all. They'll all made me who I am today and I like who I've become. Also, all the decisions I made for the "truth" I did out of a pure heart and for all the right reasons so how can I regret that?

LongHairGal

In this day and age, a college degree is necessary even for jobs where one time one was not needed.

Even a two-year degree is looked down on in some circles. College is a big business and it is them who want to keep raising the bar - in order to keep the public on an expensive education treadmill. Nevertheless, an education is wonderful and a person should get as much as they can.

To the Witness religion (and other repressive regimes) an educated person is dangerous because they are harder to fool.

But, everybody is not college material and sometimes they can't do it, not to mention the cost of it.

It has been said that some ex-JWs make it sound as if they "might have" become a brain surgeon (or words to that effect) if it weren't for the religion, meanwhile they have trouble behind the counter at a minimum wage job.

Even if this is true, college is still a good thing even for self-enrichment. Everybody can't be a brain surgeon or even land a job making a fantastic salary, and we all know that. But, an education can help a person be better off.

adjusted knowledge

There are routes available to attain a college education. You're right about some industries wanting more than a two-year degree. The local hospitals here want their RNs to have 4 year degrees, and the retail management positions in the area that used to require only experience want a college degree also.

Pete Zahut

Here is a link to the US Census which shows that approximately 26% of the US population graduates college. Page 5, towards the bottom, shows the college graduation stats.

The population of the U.S last year was around 320 million

26% of that number is around 83 million people who were able to attended college.

I think Teenyuck is not understanding why people are angry about not being allowed to go on to higher education. No one said that going to College was a guarantee of success but it would have been nice to have had that option rather than have been told in so many words, that to do so, could cost us our lives.

Do you know if your parents had a college fund set up for you? Did you have a secret stash of money you were going use to pay for college?

The typical JW parent didn't bother to save for their own retirement let alone save for their children's college fund. Why would they when the wicked system of things along with it's evil institutes of higher learning, was about to be destroyed?

Did you take the SAT or ACT? Did you get good to great grades in high school? Were your parents focused on academics and did they really push you to get all you could from the educational system?4. Were you prepared to go to a community college, take out loans, ask for grants, work to fill out the financial picture; all to pay for your education?

When you don't have college as an option, you don't take the SAT or ACT tests or look into grants loans or scholarships. What would be the point if attending college could "supposedly" cost you your everlasting life in a paradise which was supposedly"right around the corner" ?

The point is, we were robbed of the choice to take advantage of the opportunities that were available to us. Our parents made choices about our futures based on information they read, written by men they didn't even know.

College and EX-JW Discontent....Questions and Stats