"Education": Looking beyond the graduation cap & framed certificate

"you don't need a degree to do well in life" 

OR 

OR

OR

OR

but let me tell you a story of

d o c t o r s who work crazy shifts at crazy hours, who sacrifice sleep, food and a family to help save lives, who helplessly watch their patients battling with the precious few seconds they have left to live, who are the lifeline of millions of people across the globe despite being only human, but who are sometimes the difference between life and death; 

d e n t i s t s who don't have the prettiest job in the world but have the power to give you the prettiest smile, who are skilled with their hands and skilled with their knowledge, who can fix facial disfigurements and fix the distorted reflection that stares back at you in the mirror, who too can potentially save your life from silent killers;

p h a r m a c i s t s who have memorised medications and are practised in the field of medicine, who design and dispense drugs and educate others on life-saving therapies, whose expertise and knowledge you're silently begging for at 2am with tired eyes and a crying child whose pain you can't seem to take away; 

o p t o m e t r i s t s in whose hands lie the cardinal sense that allows you to perceive the world and experience life, who have to have a meticulous eye for detail and a razor-sharp memory, who have to know the intricate difference between "normal" and "abnormal" because one slip up on the playing field could be the make or break of you losing your eyesight; 

s c i e n t i s t s who play an endless game of chase with medical advances and scientific research, who are in a cruel race against invisible but dangerous killers, who specialise in knowing and learning the delicate balance of the body and learning the whys and the hows of why it so often gets disrupted so that they can create the drugs of the future that will save millions from fates tied down to hospital beds and pill-popping from one meal to the next; 

m a t h e m a t i c i a n s  &  p h y s i c i s t s who are at the forefront of exciting discoveries, who stumble upon theories that transform the way we view, perceive, understand parts of life;

t e c h n o l o g i s t s  &  e n g i n e e r s who in a rapidly evolving world of technology, bring smarter and faster electronic devices to the palm of our hand, literally changing the way our lives function, who are the masterminds behind aviation, physical science and machinery;

l a w y e r s who are well-versed in the complexities of jurisprudence, who are the voice of those whose voices so often go unheard, who protect the vulnerable from loss, pain and a life they would be forced to succumb to but don't deserve, who can save an innocent man from a fate behind bars and put away a guilty man who would have otherwise touched and poisoned the lives of oblivious innocents; 

t e a c h e r s who tirelessly put up with challenging kids, reckless behaviour, and sleepless nights, constantly living by the phrase "there's no rest for the wicked", who have to be on the ball in the endless quest for academic or religious knowledge and in doing so are educating an entire generation; 

j o u r n a l i s t s who work round the clock to keep up with breaking news and the ever-changing world, who risk their lives in war zones and witness unspeakable tragedies;

d e s i g n e r s   b u s i n e s s m e n   a c c o u n t a n t s   p i l o t s    n u r s e s  &  m i d w i f e s
p s y c h o l o g i s t s    w r i t e r s    v e t e r i n a r i a n s    a r c h i t e c t s    l i n g u i s t s   
h i s t o r i a n s    p o l i t i c i a n s    p h i l o s o p h e r s    t h e r a p i s t s...

...want me to go on?

because believe me, I can. You not only need life-skills and knowledge to be in any one of those fields - and others - but you need life-skills and knowledge to get through the degree that lets you be in the field in the first place. Granted, not every profession or career path requires a degree, but some absolutely do. They are degree-knowledge dependent; it doesn't necessarily mean that you are any more or less knowledgeable than the person sitting next to you, but it sure as hell means that you're more equipped to do the job you're specialised in.

Saving lives, shaping lives, bettering lives - it would all crumble to dust without knowledge and life-skills. And the people saving, shaping, bettering lives - they're not doing what they do so that can live a comfy life, nor are they doing it because they "like to have a schedule" *.
They're doing it because those lives matter. Because making a difference, matters. And yes, it means needing a degree to be damn good at it, it means being academically able to meet the challenges thrown your way. Those degrees and professions aren't a walk in the park; let me tell you that it's blood, sweat, and my God a whole lot of tears and anyone who says otherwise is blissfully ignorant.

[* I'm not even going to touch on the sheer absurdity that is this statement, it's such an ignorant - and ironically, uneducated - statement that I can't even cope]


It doesn't matter whether or not we leave university and use our degree. It's a weapon in our arsenal. It lets us make a difference to the lives of the hundreds upon thousands of people whose paths cross ours and I'm sorry if you think that that isn't something worth being valued. I'm sorry that you can't appreciate the pursuit for knowledge, or appreciate the fact that so many of us who are working for you, who you don't even realise are the pinnacle of so many aspects of your life as we make up the medical sector, the education sector, the humanitarian sector, the business sector, the arts sector...are able to do so because of our university education. It doesn't reflect a so-called lack of skills or air of superiority on our part; it simply reflects the lack of gratitude and volume of ignorance on yours.