HAGEN: And what have you learned today?

My freshman year of college, I had a professor break down how much money we were wasting by skipping one of his transcendent lectures. It was your typical bland, general requirement, four-credit course with three hours worth of lecturing (sleeping) and a one hour lab per week. At $1,228 per credit hour, the final figure came to approximately $100. With the money you lost by blowing off a single class you could have bought the equivalent of an iPod shuffle or a digital camera or two and a half Boston University student IDs. Or you could have gotten me to do just about anything.

As I enter the swan song of senior year, my last seven semesters with all the fixings – housing, dining plan, my undergraduate student fee, whatever that does exactly – can be appreciated at a grand total of about $175,000. It is so easy to assign a dollar value to my education and maybe at the end of my life I can even look back and calculate the utility to see if college was really worth it (see, I did manage to attend at least $100 worth of economics lectures). The problem is that there are lessons I have experienced at BU that my 122 credits so far accumulated cannot account for. So how do I measure the value of these?

I have learned it is possible to get from the 17th floor of Warren Towers to the fifth floor of the CAS building in less than five minutes, granted of course that the residents of the first floor just drag their lazy butts down the stairs. How to cohabitate with three other girls in a room meant for half the number of occupants and more importantly, how to do so without feeling the constant desire to defenestrate one of them. How to avoid scurvy by sneaking the equivalent of a fruit basket out of the dining halls without being caught and that being nice to your dorm security guards can make your life infinitely easier.

I have learned that when Dante described his ninth level of Hell as a freezing lake of ice, he was most likely inspired by the Boston winter. That this formerly thin-skinned girl could toughen up her outer-layer to defend from the cold, from the negativity of others and from the fear of failure. That the fastest way to be seen at Student Health Services is to just throw up in the middle of the waiting room since it shows your true dedication to this stomach flu.

I have learned that my professors know a lot but they don’t know everything and that I don’t know everything nor do I know a lot. That exams are almost never about the facts you are given in a lecture but rather about what you are able to conclude from putting them together. That no amount of stress will help you perform better on any assignment and that sometimes you just need to close your damn book and open up that bottle of wine.

I learned that I will not always get the A. That I will not always get the job. That I will not always sink the last cup in Beer Pong. I have learned that I am OK with all of these things.

I learned that in victory, a body of completely different students can join together in exuberant celebration, whether it is due to a hockey national championship or the groundbreaking election of a new president. That in loss, this diverse school can unite to ameliorate the tragedy, whether it be raising money for the survivors of an earthquake or offering a shoulder to cry on when a member of our community passes away. That I too belong in the crowd and that the crowd believes I belong.

I have learned how to love, how to let go and how to love again. That it is possible to sink to a level of such overwhelming darkness that you think all the light in your life will never come back. But I have ultimately learned it never disappears forever, as long as you refuse to stop looking up. I have come to the conclusion that some people think I am witty and smart while some think that my parents must have been siblings. Some people think I am attractive and some that I resemble a cross-dressing Keith Richards. Some people will like me and some people will hate me for no discernible reason. I have also learned that it’s not worth caring what “some” people think.

I have learned that my body belongs to me. That my thoughts, my beliefs and all my dreams belong to me. That my future belongs to me. But perhaps most importantly, that the right of way as a pedestrian on Commonwealth Avenue will never belong to me.

So, in this last semester I have $25,000 left to put toward my education. What should I use it for? I understand this money has provided me with the chance to experience a new life, to attend BU and to live in a major city with limitless opportunities. However, I think it is impossible to transcribe everything I have gained into neat little columns of figures, like some sort of balance of payments (make that $200 worth of economic lectures I attended!). While everything I have retained from textbooks, powerpoints and lectures will help me in my future career – I can ask “paper or plastic?” in multiple languages now – what will also hold a great amount of impact as I move forward are the things I learned outside of academics.

As I am preparing to leave Boston University I realize that I have learned to train my eye to uncover lessons no matter where I may be or no matter what I am doing. Mark Twain said, “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education,” and I too have found that learning comes in an innumerable amount of different forms, whether you are in a classroom or not. No matter how mundane or insignificant something may seem, you can always glean some piece of wisdom or discover some new truth about yourself from it. Most of all I have learned that if you are able to measure your education with nothing but a numerical value then, well, you didn’t get a very good one.