Final Audio Interview - Winchell

Olivia Karen, a guest on the podcast, shares her thoughts on college. She initially didn't want to go to Oregon State but changed her mind due to financial reasons. She believes that FAFSA is not enough and thinks schools should be free. Olivia also questions the necessity of college for certain careers and believes it should be more of a choice. She discusses the importance of enjoying one's job after college, especially for engineering majors. Olivia mentions her least favorite memory of physics class and her favorite memory of being on the lacrosse team. She rates Oregon State a 7 out of 10, appreciating unique program options but noting questionable views on the queer community. The podcast ends with gratitude for Olivia's perspective and a suggestion for future episodes. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our podcast. My name is Gracie Winchell, and today we have a very, very special guest joining us. But before we get into that, we're going to talk about this week's topic, which is college. So the person I've invited is actually my best friend that I met at Oregon State, and they are our college professionals, so they're going to kind of walk us through some of their thoughts regarding college. All right, so everyone give it up for Olivia Karen. All right. Question number one. Was Oregon State always your first choice, or was there somewhere else you wanted to go? So I wanted to go almost anywhere except Oregon State, actually. Fun fact. I almost went to University of Pittsburgh. I decided the night before the day that we had to, like, make our decision by, I don't remember what day it was, like, May 30th or something like that, yeah, and then I finally had the finances talk with my parents, and they were like, hey, this is going to be how much debt you're in if you go out of state, and I was like, oh, I don't want to do that. So here I am. Definitely not your first choice, but thank you for sharing. Speaking of debt, we know that finances are a pretty big detriment for some prospective students, especially with Biden's student loan forgiveness plan being very prevalent. Do you think that FAFSA is enough either for you personally or for anybody, and is there more that we could be doing to help students who are in financial need? Yeah, so I think FAFSA is most definitely not enough for almost anybody unless you're, like, extremely wealthy or you're literally an emancipated child. I think schools should be free, first of all, so obviously I'm not going to think FAFSA is enough, but I think there are also some things we could do as an institution to mitigate how indebted our students are. All of Oregon State schools have disproportionately high tuition compared to other states, which I feel like kind of discourages people from going in-state, first of all. But also, President Murthy makes $720,000 a year, and I think that's outrageous, so. Okay, so we discussed that financial aid isn't enough to get people into college. That kind of leads us to the question, is college even a necessary step in joining the workforce? What do you think? Yeah, I think if you want to go into a workforce where you're not necessarily having to trade your body and your physical health like some trades are, like, you don't have to go to college to be an underwater welder and you can make an insane amount of money, but also a lot of them die by the time they're 35, so it's like kind of a trade-off, I guess, that you're making. I think it shouldn't be necessary. I know that my dad uses almost nothing he learned in college as an environmental science major in his career as a programmer, so I think basically all of that can be either on-the-job training or just, like, he learned it as a hobby, so I think that it is, but as more of, like, a systemic issue of our society rather than something that should actually be necessary. I think it's just, I don't know if it's, like, evolved out of, like, the society that we have. How important do you think it is for you to enjoy your job after college, whether that's something related to your major, like you're doing, or something that, you know, your dad's doing where it's not necessarily directly correlated to what you graduated with? Yeah, I think I probably want to do something similar to what I've majored in, but I guess everybody probably starts like that. I think for engineering majors, it probably is a little more likely than, say, somebody who's, like, an English major, like, most likely they're not going to be an English, like, you know what I mean? An author is probably not going to be a sustainable career choice for them, but, like, engineering definitely is, so I think there will probably be, at least in the beginning, some sort of, like, direct correlation between what I'm doing for my job and what I'm majoring in. For our final two questions, these are kind of hand-in-hand, but we want to talk about favorite and least favorite memories from college. As many or as little as you would like to offer us, we would love to hear them. Yeah, I kind of got thrown, like, several curveballs this year, kind of had the worst spring term of my entire life, hopefully of my entire life. I've only had one, so who knows? Who knows what the future will bring? None of those were really college-related, though. I feel like, yeah, physics, I'm not a big fan of physics class. I could do without that. That might be my worst, like, directly college-related experience. Yeah, not a huge fan of that. I did really like, I think probably my experience on the lacrosse team has been one of my favorites. I love that we were able to practice four times a week. That was really nice. Even though we're just a women's club team, I think that would probably be not the same at other universities. So I'm glad that there was space for us and that we were able to practice four times a week. I think that's definitely my favorite memory. Least favorite memory, either physics class or the Neha Suresh incident. Yes. The notable Neha Suresh incident of fall 2023. Yes. Or was it winter? It was winter. Between winter and fall term. So it was, like, December of 2023? I don't even know. Oh, yeah, because winter term starts in the new year. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so January of 2024. Oh, brother. Oregon State, I'd give it a 7 out of 10. Lots of, like, more unique program options. College of Forestry student, you know, I gotta appreciate that. Um, lots of sports opportunities. A lot of questionable views on the queer community. Yeah. But. Probably my preference would be queer. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming in and interviewing with me. It was a pleasure to have you and hear your perspective about college. Thank you so much. Woo! Okay, so that is going to wrap it up for this week's episode. I hope you all enjoyed it. I know I sure did. And if you want to see Luke back on the podcast, let me know. It's okay. You don't have to be quiet. Yeah, you're good.