The guilt in being educated
As pathetic as it sounds, being smart was the only thing I had as a child. Academic validation was the only validation I had. I was never known to be the pretty one, the athletic one, the outgoing one, nor the talented one — which was totally fine. I was just the kid who often recited in class and had good grades. I just enjoyed learning for learning’s sake. While my classmates bring their beyblades or Pokemon cards, I bring my huge ass encyclopedias to class. Instead of being addicted to video games (The Sims is an exception, of course), I was playing Encarta on our 2000s home computer.
I think my upbringing had a lot of influence on what I wanted to achieve later in life. I have always wanted to be educated. I have always wanted to achieve great things. This is the reason why despite coming from a humble family from a dead-end town, I was ambitious enough to apply for a top university for college. Fortunately I was accepted, and after four years, I got my diploma.
During the first years of college, I still feel the surreal cloud around me. Even if I wouldn’t admit it, I felt like being a UP student was indeed part of my identity — that I have the potential to change the world — which did fade away eventually.
Now that I’m out of university, I don’t want to flaunt that I graduated from UP. I don’t want people to associate me with the bright minds that came out of it and expect me to have an absurd level of intellect as well. While I did learn a lot in my four years in college, I still don’t know a lot of things. I’m still me. I’m still average and unexceptional. And this haunts me with guilt.
I feel like getting my college diploma, albeit the given prestige, is also a burden I’ll be carrying.
I acknowledge the privilege that has been given to me to finish college — and this is the exact reason why I feel like I’m carrying it as a burden. Because I was given this opportunity to have education — which in the first place, must be a right for everyone, but it’s not — I must do everything in my will to use this to build a better world. Not everyone has the opportunity to go to college and be given a scholarship as well, so I must translate this education into something meaningful, to prove to myself and to everyone that I deserved the opportunity that was given to me.
It would be a huge waste if I would not be doing something groundbreaking and meaningful in my lifetime. Because if I won’t, then I have robbed the opportunity out of someone else who might have done better than I did.
I feel this need to impart great value in this world, because this is my obligation.
To be educated means I need to give back. To be educated means I have to contribute to change the world for the better. Because not everyone is fortunate enough to receive the same opportunities I was given, it would be selfish of me to just be ordinary.
But I am ordinary.
That’s why I feel like I’m always running in circles after graduating. I’m just a lost soul, trying to figure out my place in this world. At the same time, I need to do something great, but I don’t know how or if I’ll ever get to that.
Being ordinary feeds me with guilt. I feel like I have not given justice to the resources spent for my education. But in any way that I can, I try to embody the ‘wisdom’ I gained. Getting a degree did not only taught me to have knowledge at one given field, but it also taught me to be more critical, more understanding, and more compassionate. I now look at people and things beyond what they are.
And I hope, this is the genuine measure of being educated — not in doing something grand, but in cultivating discernment to everything and looking through the world with a wider lens.
In this case, I hope I still embody what it means to be educated, despite not achieving great things — at least, not yet.
