<p>I’ve been fortunate to get my education at some world-class schools and alas, we are not rolling in the dough either. </p>
<p>But I do feel like I was unrealistically idealistic back when I was seventeen about what it would mean to attend a top class university and ‘succeed’. What I now know is that whether or not you attend a golden ticket school, it’s not actually going to shield you from the risks that we all face as humans – corny as that sounds. In our college alumni magazine, they ran a really interesting series of profiles awhile ago, after asking alumni who DIDN’T have the sorts of lives which were usually featured in the magazine to go ahead and write in. They featured a woman who had recently been released from rehab for a drug addiction, another woman who went to prison for embezzlement, someone who had recently left an abusive marriage, someone who had lost a child – A lot of these women said that they weren’t your traditional successful alum, but that nonetheless they had acquired certain types of skills and strength of character that had enabled them to learn from these painful experiences. They were all really bright and articulate as well. Going to a ‘good school’ won’t keep you from being widowed, being killed by a drunk driver, facing the risks of something like suicide – but it might help you weather it better. Perhaps.</p>
<p>Clearly not everyone who graduates from an Ivy League school ends up owning a yacht or a mansion – but that doesn’t actually mean that getting a good education is a waste of time. However, if any parent thinks “Oh, hooray. Junior just got into Yale so now I don’t have to worry about him anymore - he’s on the road to success,” it appears that, alas, that is also an unrealistically rosy way of looking at the situation.</p>