They say that a bachelor’s degree is proof that you can commit yourself to something that is both long-term and very difficult. They say that it is not just a sign of higher learning, but of great dedication. They say that it tells potential employers that you’ve got what it takes. Well, guess what? I have a bachelor’s degree, and it’s fucking useless.

In 2006, I graduated summa cum laude from a prestigious private university. Not college, mind you, but university. A college can provide you with an undergraduate education, but only at a university can you pursue a postgraduate education. So I graduated from the better of the two. And just so you know, summa cum laude means “with highest honors,” a distinction that only the best students receive for outstanding academic performance. I got A grades in every single class I needed to take for my major, and I got A grades in almost all of the other classes I needed for the credit my degree required. Four years ago, I pretty much aced university.

Today, I am a freelance writer working for table scraps.

That degree was supposed to mean something. It was supposed to take me places. It was supposed to get me a career. It was supposed to put me in a line of work that would ensure financial stability for the rest of my life. It was supposed to be something I could do more with than make meaningless boasts of academic excellence four years later. It was supposed to be more than an obscenely expensive piece of paper framed and hanging on my wall, goddammit.

Coming from a university and not a college just bolsters its own meaninglessness.

Rather than help me find a job, that degree just puts me in an awkward position with potential employers. When it comes to writing positions, employers always choose experience over education. In many cases, I can’t even apply for a writing position because it requires experience that I don’t have because I only graduated recently. This is the case with almost every writing job opening I have seen or applied to, including journalism, technical writing, copy writing, copy editing, proofreading, you name it. In the instances when I can apply, I invariably lose the job to someone more experienced than me. Basically, I can’t get a writing job because I don’t have experience, and I can’t get experience because I don’t have a writing job. This damn degree has trapped me in an inescapable paradox.

And it’s not just the writing jobs that I can’t find. For some reason, even entry-level positions in other professional fields don’t want me, either. Why do these employers think I can’t do entry-level work? Is it because of the nature of my degree? I graduated summa cum laude from a good school, for fuck’s sake! I can do a whole lot more than write! I dedicated four years of my life to higher learning and was noted for outstanding performance throughout! And I have the paper to prove it! You think just because I have a degree in some other major that I can’t master whatever low-priority busywork some entry-level employee at the bottom of the food chain is charged with? Screw you!

And the troubles this degree has caused me don’t end at the professional level, either. In addition to its uselessness in finding a career-oriented job, it screws me over with other jobs, too. You know the kind of jobs I’m talking about. The kind of jobs that require no education. The kind of jobs that they hire teenagers for. The kind of jobs that pay meager hourly wages. The kind of jobs that never require any creativity or problem solving. The kind of jobs that people with degrees don’t apply for. People with degrees don’t get those jobs because they’re overqualified. Employers for those jobs see the name of a university (or college) on a job application and throw it out. They’d rather employ an uneducated person who has a much smaller chance of finding a better job. That way they save themselves the hassle of hiring new people after the educated employee quits for greener pastures. And leaving that part of the application blank doesn’t do much good. Four year gaps in the section about past jobs are very conspicuous. In other words, not only has this degree proven nigh useless for me at the professional level, but it has also cut me off from the general labor force, as well.

That damn degree is useless. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. And the tuition fees? I should have bought a fancy car and a roll of toilet paper with that money instead, because all the degree is good for now is to wipe my ass.