Sir, After nearly twenty hours and two quarters, the primary benefit I’ve gained from the Trott Business Program is figuring out exactly what I’m running away from. 

The penny dropped when asked to parrot a slew of oven-ready interview lines. Still, I should have known it was over for me when I first walked into a room of two hundred self-important second-years being lectured by twenty or so third-years and a handful of middling career advisors. 

Be your major what it may, you will certainly have heard a first-year wax lyrical about the prospects of Trott. Knowing that first-year, you might even have asked yourself how someone with such little pre-professional prowess could ever be welcomed into such a selective group. However, the rejectees (as some of you will be glad to know) are the fortunate ones in this case. 

Some of your readers may think I am the problem. A few will be pointing to the fact that a couple dozen “Summer Analysts” were able to rattle my ego. It is true; I admit it. (Indeed, it was only after last week’s failed therapy session that I decided to take pen to paper.) However, the fundamental point remains. Given that intellectual courage is the primary filter in the University’s admissions process, one would reasonably expect their four years here to nurture and enhance it, not blunt it. 

To my fellow Trotters, please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about. The attendance rate speaks for itself. But, as you’ll have gathered by now, I do not blame you. We’re not getting it wrong everywhere. Academic programs at the University are notoriously non-vocational and often very theoretical. While frustrating to some, our refusal to give way to the general industrialization of higher education equips us with a broader skill set and a stronger foundation to confront problems more critically and creatively. UChicago’s careers programs ought to take note. 

Nor is the problem confined to Hyde Park. By not taking the same approach, Trott forbids both future employees from generating disruptive ideas and future employers from hearing them. Put the shoe on the other foot: Were you an associate in corporate America, would you not be mildly bored after your tenth interviewee of the day follows the ninth by pontificating about the profit potential of opening a gluten-free falafel stand on a university campus? This is the hopeless game we are being trained to play. 

The homogenization of it, in a word, is only part of the problem. The moment you stumble into this high-brow sperm race, your autonomy is entirely usurped. The blinkers required for such a pointlessly onerous process stifle our involvement in other fields—tech and startups, to name just a couple, have taken a backseat in this place. 46 percent of UChicago graduates entering the workforce go into finance or consulting, compared to roughly a third at institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern. And as evenings of curiosity give way to a groggy midnight oil, you will often find yourself too exhausted, if not too far gone, to realize it. 

On the other hand, it takes no genius to realize that cognitive diversity greatly benefits any problem-solving team, so I return to the question of why we endure this drivel. Regrettably, I can’t help but think it must have something to do with the historic insecurity of a select group of businesspeople. At some point, they must’ve realized their deficiencies, concluded that consulting, being a vocation far more welcoming to charlatans than engineering or law, was their calling, and tried to leave the entryway as narrow as possible behind them. 

This is not to say that no consultants or bankers are more talented than engineers or dentists (indeed, many are), only that it is easier to find idiots among the former than the latter. Nor am I calling for the abolition of Trott or any like-minded pre-professional program. Career guidance can be valuable, as can an education in the fundamentals of systems, accounting, and management. But when we withdraw ingenuity from a practice that demands it, we have surely gone too far. 

It only takes a little confidence to resist. The myth goes that Procrustes, a rogue Attican bandit, enticed passing travelers to stay the night in a magical bed that always fit its guests perfectly. Being always too tall or too short, Procrustes would fit the bed to the guest—or rather the guest to the bed—by stretching them out or chopping off their limbs. (It is said that Mr. McKinsey makes his fortune the same way: by offering a “solution” and then creating a problem.) One day, Theseus put an end to it and fit Procrustes into his own bed. So, the next time someone offers a bed and demands your head, tell them—very politely—to fuck off. Please. 

Regretfully, 

A Disgruntled Student