Two Years Are Better than Four
uz ADDISON
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OH, THE HAND WRINGING. “College as America used to
understand it is coming to an end,” bemoans Rick Perlstein and
his beatnik friend of fallen face. Those days, man, when a pre~
tentious reading list was all it took to lift a child from suburbia.
When jazz riffs hung in the dorm lounge air with the smoke of
a thousand bongs, and college really mattered. Really mattered?
Rick Perlstein thinks so. It mattered so much to him that
he never got over his four years at the University of Privilege.
So he moved hack to live in its shadow, like a retired hallerina
taking a seat in the stalls. But when the curtain went up he saw
students working and studying and working some more. Adults
L12 ADIJISON attended Piedmont Virginia Community College and
Southern Maine Community College, where she graduated with a
degree in biology in ZOO8. She received a graduate degree from the
Royal Veterinary College in London in Z014 and now works as a
veterinarian in Virginia. This essay, published in ZOO7, was a runner-
up in a New York Times Magazine college essay contest. The essay
responds to Rick Perlstein’s opinion piece “What’s the Matter With
Collegel,” in which he argues that universities no longer matter as
much as they once did.
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