I hate school.

And I know what your thinking… Olivia Brown, BSc in Psychology, soon to be MPH, how do YOU of all people hate school, well I do. I don’t mean my school or program per se, I mean schools as institutions and business and as a place where creativity and creatives go to be stifled.

I love learning. I am that friend that is a literal encyclopedia full of useful(and useless) facts, and I struggle to conceptualize my disdain for school because it is where you go to learn. BUT BUT BUT I think my dislike for school has come in part from not only realizing that school isn’t the only place to learn, but also realizing that in school, they (meaning, administrators, teachers, donors, whoever) often are not ensuring that you learn, but more so that you pass and pay. That’s not only unfulfilling but disheartening. For example, in my program, we have to write and op-ed about a current public health issue or policy. I wrote mine about Black women’s maternal mortality and how implicit bias training in medical schools could be used to address racial discrimination and Black women’s maternal mortality. The more I ended up researching for the article and the more I sat with it, the less I agreed with the position, mostly because I recognize the limitations of implicit bias trainings, as someone who has had to sit through several( and still be racially attacked by peers after) and I also recognize that that “solution” was too passive for a problem with such urgency. I bought up these concerns to my TA as she critiqued my second draft and she told me that what I had was substantial for the assignment.

My TA meant well, and what I had was substantial, but it didn’t challenge me to truly go there, and with four other assignments and looming exams, how was I to completely rewrite and rework this oped without sacrificing something else? That’s why I hate school. I hate feeling like I can’t truly dive in to the content because there’s always something else to be done somewhere else. I hate school because learning should be fun, but school makes it feel like the biggest chore, that I’m not even sure I’m completing correctly. I hate school because I cant spend 25/8 doing school but no, all these people, with all of these fancy degrees can’t seem to get that, so they still design school to consume my whole life. When my whole life is not school (*audible gasps from the people who designed my program*).

Then, don’t even get me started on the elitism. Schools, universities and higher education specifically(even more specifically those who have garnered some prestige), want you to believe that because you’re willing to go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt you are the smartest of the smart and cream of the crop. George W. Bush went to Yale and Harvard and well… look at the material. Schools and formal education have become a sign of status and privilege while ensuring that some people will never attain either. Schools have taught (or at least tried to teach) me to look down on artists and creatives who do unconventional work instead of teaching me to be one and giving me space to practice something creative with the same intensity and seriousness that they teach and reinforce say, math. I wish art, music, dance, anything was intentionally incorporated in my schedules, instead of being an extracurricular or reserved for those who are already excellent in the field.

School is supposed to be a place where you explore who you are, learn and grow and yet I feel like my undergrad alma mater and to some degree my current university are committed to popping out these little robots instead of self-actualized people.

I’m a cynic, I know. Yet, I’m still thankful for having the opportunity to be in school. I know so many doors have opened for me because I’m a student, but there’s so much that could be better, so many people that have been left out or shut out and so much that needs to change. And the irony is that in most cases, in order for me to be in a room to make change, I need a degree. Trifling.