To be an Alumni, or not to be...

Here I am. January 2nd and I'm staying true to my resolution...pretty impressive! I've also made it kind of an unspoken promise to myself to increase my presence on the Web over the next few months. In doing so, I have joined about a thousand networks and groups over the past couple days. I'm not picky; if it has a lot of members and the words "job opportunities" somewhere in the description, I sign myself up. I'm going somewhere with this- I promise.

So, my first natural selection for groups involved my alumni status from DePaul University. This process should have been easy; it should have been trouble-free. However, I ran into a situation that irked me. Maybe irked isn't a strong enough word- it'd be more like PISSED me the HELL off.

ALUMNI is a term that should be reserved for those students who actually graduated from said institution. It's a word that connotates an earned education. Included under this umbrella is late nights studying/partying, countless trimester hours and the big one...$100,000 in tuition. Now I'm not a rich girl, so that's why I get hung-up on the fact that I had to pay one-hundred grand for school; it's not something I take lightly. So you can imagine my sentiments when I see people falsely claiming alumni status.

I guess technically, by American dictionary definition, anybody who attended an institution is an alumni, despite the duration. However, it is my personal one-hundred thousand dollar opinion that alumni should be reserved for those who actually graduated from said institution. It's not fair for you to go for three weeks and drop out and now suddenly your an alumni- that's not how it works. The school doesn't recognize it, so you shouldn't recognize yourself as such.

I'm familiar with how this works. In fact, I did the 'ole one month trial at Northern Illinois University. Let's just say, it didn't work out, and that's totally fine. I don't reference it on any resume's, alumni associations or job applications- it's like it never happened.

The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that I worked hard and paid an arm and a leg for my education. Did you? Then get out of my alumni association!