bob ryan
“The purpose of college education in America today I believe is to enforce your knowledge in the career goal you are seeking but not bound you to that career.” In “The Pink Floyd Night School” professor Mark Edmundson wrote an article stating how when he was in his last year of college he was asked the question “So, what are you doing after graduation?” and he elaborates his answer to that question throughout the article. Edmundson further goes into depth about the time he took off from graduation to explore himself as he states I spent five years wandering around doing nothing or getting as close to it as I could imagine (Page 12). Edmundson goes on to explain that he was a cab driver, an obsessed moviegoer, a crewman on a ship and other unusual occupations which tells us his experimentation of trying different career fields.
But there was one job that Edmundson said was the most memorable was a gig on the stage crew for a rock production company in Jersey City. And Edmundson’s most memorable experience of that most memorable job was the night of Pink Floyd. Edmundson liked to describe Pink Floyd’s crazy ideas and how they would go out of the norm to make their performances memorable. “They wanted their amps stacked high, not just on stage, where they were so broad and tall and forbidding that they looked like a barricade on the Paris Commune” as Edmundson stated. Furthermore Edmundson finishes summarizing his article by the question “So, what are you doing after graduation?” but this time about thirty-five years later Edmundson now a college teacher repeated the old question to his students. His students go on to say all about different types of professions they want to seek and Edmundson states how culture is on their side now and lastly wishes how his students can see a canopy of white silk which symbolized Edmundson’s experiences and most memorable job with Pink Floyd; and the choice of decisions he was inquired to before his final decision in...