Walking away from the Honors College with my hands empty, I waited for the anticipated sensations of liberation and satisfaction to finally hit me. My senior thesis, finally submitted, was supposed to evoke those distinctive emotions I had spent months expecting, yet I only felt only frustration.
About to turn the street corner, I glanced over my shoulder a final time to look back at the building that now housed my completed thesis and the hundreds of other thesis’ students before me had submitted. For the first time, I realized my 70-page thesis would never leave the building in which I had left it in. My work would sit on the same shelf where I had left it for months, maybe even years, before someone would ever take the time to flip through it, perhaps maybe if I was lucky even read it. My thesis, I then decided, was incomplete.
The passion for my thesis came from my experience interning at the United States Senate Education Committee. During my time in Washington, DC, I spent the majority of my internship researching for-profit colleges. While in DC I realized that for-profits were notorious for targeting low-income, first generation high school graduates who knew little about their options when it came to post-secondary education. Not only did these schools enroll students who they knew would struggle to succeed at their institutions but their graduation rates proved it. I left the Senate Education Committee knowing too much.
The next fall I spent at The University of South Carolina, while there I never doubted wanting to continue my research on for-profit colleges. After a year of investigating, researching and composing, my thesis was complete. In it the questionable motives and practices used by for-profits were discussed along with specific legislative actions necessary in order to change the industry.
It was during the 15-minute walk back to my dormitory from the Honors College that I decided writing a thesis simply wasn’t enough, and with this decision my life changing four-month journey began. The frustration I felt the day I turned in my thesis eventually evolved into motivation. Motivation to do something more than just write a paper. Completing my thesis, graduating with honors, and moving on with my life would have been easy. Instead, I spent the last four months of my college career traveling to schools across South Carolina, preparing speeches, publishing brochures, and talking to students about for-profits. It was during those four months that I learned more about myself than I had during my entire college experience. Traveling to some of the most poverty stricken schools in South Carolina, I met students who were so similar to me, yet were guided down completely different educational paths. Often, I found myself wondering how different the outcomes of their lives would be from mine, and how inherently unfair it seemed to be. Day by day each speech I gave became more passionate than the last, I contacted more schools than I ever thought possible, and persuaded hundreds of students who had once considered a for-profit as part of their future education that there were better options.
Critics told me I wouldn’t change anyone’s decision on where they would end up going to college. I think some would disagree. After talking to a 12th grade English class in Sumter, South Carolina, one student went home to withdraw his application to The University of Phoenix. The next day his high school counselor contacted me letting me know they had plans to discuss his options when it came to community colleges.
The young man from Sumter was one of many students whose mind I changed during those four months. It was only after this realization that I finally felt those feelings of liberation and satisfaction that I had envisioned and expected so many months ago.
