One of the biggest rivalries on campus, besides the brawl over patties or grilled chicken in the dining hall, is between business and liberal arts students.
As I approach the halfway point in my senior year, the disparity between the two very different educations Fairfield offers has never been more evident.
Students in the Dolan School of Business are seen around campus in suits, on their way to an interview in New York City with a corporate banking or accounting firm, while College of Arts and Sciences students are busy writing papers on the injustices of the death penalty or painting in the basement of the Loyola art studio.
The majority of graduates who leave Fairfield in May with a business degree will also be leaving with a job-probably a job that is the beginning of 40 or so years in a cubicle and business suits every day.
Most of them will have a job that the business school grooms them for-marketing, insurance agencies, accounting firms, etc. Most of them will start off with a salary and bonus that most college student’s bank accounts have never seen.
However, how many of these distinguished Dolan School of Business graduates will be leaving with an understanding of the world they are entering, the people they will affecting on a large scale and an understanding of themselves?
How many graduates of the business school truly understand the poverty and injustices in the world, which their corporate companies will most likely not be helping?
How many of these graduates who will sit in rush hour trains, buses and cars every day will truly have a feeling that they are making a difference in the world?
How many of these graduates understand that life is more than just about making money, but giving back to the world? How many of these graduates will come to despise their office job and become bored after just a few years? How many will regret that they sentenced themselves to years of looking forward to little but retirement and didn’t take the time to pursue their passions, interests and dreams?
Fairfield students are lucky to be given a Jesuit education, an education that emphasizes giving back to the world. However, a large part of the student body will leave Fairfield after four years with no idea what truly makes them happy.
It’s January, and I know many liberal arts students who have no clue what they are doing after that dreaded day in May (I wouldn’t dare say the “G” word). However, I have also heard their musings about what they might do, from theater students who are daring to move into the city and try to land acting jobs, to art history students who are hoping to get an internship at an Italian museum, to international studies majors hoping for a Fulbright in the Middle East.
These are students pursuing their dreams while they still can, while they’re young and can see the world and the people of it, not just the people in the skyscrapers of a city somewhere.
They’re not taking the easy route where they are guaranteed a job, money to dine out and buy expensive things, and also guaranteed a mundane life during perhaps one of the few periods of their life where they have the opportunity to be adventurous.
So next time a confident business student tells you they have a job that starts in June and will be making a salary that is enough to buy a new Lexus, think twice before you congratulate them.
Ask them, instead, if sitting in an office making money for a corporation in a job that does not benefit anyone but themselves and the company was really the dream job they imagined doing as a child.
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