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Opinion

Person more than a degree

Adil Saleem
Opinion Columnist 

Right now, we're all in school; some people are freshmen, and some are graduating seniors. Everyone can remember his or her middle school days when graduating and attending high school seemed like the hardest thing in the world. It was more likely the teachers that did us in. In middle school, the teachers made us afraid of high school. The tales of how strict grading is and how everything counts for college really scared me. But then high school came and passed, and it wasn't that bad. At times, it seemed like the hardest thing in the world. 

And again the teachers made us afraid of college saying our grades would hinder our acceptance to the college of our dreams as well as making us scared of college itself and the rigors it demanded. Well, college came, and you found that you got into the school you wanted; if you didn't, you'd have a roundabout way of getting in. 

College isn't a piece of cake either, but it isn't as hard as high school teachers said it was. Granted, certain courses make you want to kick and scream and change your major, but then we move on and think "that was easy compared to this," where "this" is your new course. 

And some graduates will go on to graduate school, which they have again been told how hard it will be for them. But it's a necessity to be scared about your future. Parents have used it since we were little. The thought that we wouldn't get ice cream if we weren't good played upon the notion that ice cream was very important to us. And I'm glad I got scared because otherwise, I wouldn't have tried as hard as I did. 

Granted, our degrees will comprise a large part of who we are, but I think we place too much importance on them. I recently lost an uncle about two months ago, and that was the saddest thing I had ever experienced. It hurt more because he wasn't that old, nor was he suffering from a disease, and it blind-sided us. 

He lived a great life. He had two degrees both from prestigious universities in America as well as Canada. He worked for major firms all across the globe, but that's not what anyone who loved him will remember about him. We'll remember how he was as a person. We'll remember how he treated others as well as how we treated him. 

And I thought about it, and it applies to every one of us. Academics mold us into who we are, but our relationships mold our whole lives. I'm not saying that we should all quit school, and do God's work. But we shouldn't place the highest importance on how many degrees we garner or how many awards are given to us but focus more upon how we are as people.

In the end, all that is left is how we treated people. Isn't that what all religions teach? The Sufi poet Bulleh Shah once said, "Tear down the mosque and the temple; break everything in sight, but do not break a person's heart; it is there that God resides."

I hope, in this dog-eat-dog world, we can try and remember the things that matter most in life.

Saleem, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at aild@hotmail.com.