Congratulations! This is a good time to think about the purpose of all that ambition, effort, and striving just to get into college. The debate between the practical/vocational and the creative/artistic is endless, but this Auden poem captures the arguments with more insight and humor than I can.
In 1946 as students returned to campus after the carnage of WWII, WH Auden composed a poem for Harvard’s Victory Commencement. He warned of colleges where “Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge,” with courses on “Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport.” And he suggested a joking set of commandments for students.
Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.
Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.
Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read the New Yorker; trust in God;
And take short views.
http://the-age-of-anxiety.blogspot.com/2013/01/under-which-lyre-by-wh-auden-and-poems.html