As a student in my senior year of college, I have come to realize that aside from the abundance of information I have ascertained, the real wealth of knowledge that I have personally gained from my schooling experience has not come from a book or lecture. What I thought would be a great journey to discover my intellectual direction was essentially a crash course in social development and practical day to day growth — at least in my experience.

What I thought would be challenging my mind to seek new avenues, I have come to see the basic appeal system the drive our scholastic setting. Though some teachers try to reach “above and beyond” to empathize with the developmental struggles of their students, the majority of the teachers attune to that same structure of appeal. But why is this? The majority of evaluations are based on examinations which are created and graded by different professors that grade off different circumstances and at the same time promote individual teaching methods. How can one teach the best way they find possible when in the end the bar of success or failure isn’t created by them?

Have you ever had a certain course and had an extremely difficult teacher that pays too much attention to detail, yet listen to someone else’s experience in the same course title and hear, “(s)he’s an easy grader. The class is an easy A.” The answer is a simple one that many of us have heard many times throughout our development, “everyone learns differently.” Does this mean that we as a society are to cast out those who strive under ulterior settings because it doesn’t fit within the guidelines that conventional curriculums follow?

It is my own biased opinion that the root of these problems lies in the lack of educational diversity and are predominantly fostered in our quarterly system. To think that someone’s success in a field could be dictated by their ability to retain “x” amount of information in “y” amount of time is ludicrous.

Simply put by Henry David Thoreau, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however, measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?”

In all honesty, the majority of my growth in my college years has nothing to do with college itself. Growth came from being apart from my family, learning to make new friends, and learning how to be a relatively efficient adult. It is apparent through decades of trial, that yes this system of education does work for some.

But what happens when one falls outside these lines? What of those that wish to progress in a different setting? How can we as a more “progressive society” adhere to those ever-expanding classes that strive for success outside of conventional learning outlets?