Given the horrendous impact of the weak economy and student loan burden on young scholars, you would be tempted to think that students would be grateful for the opportunity to a potential employer.

And you would be wrong!

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s  Madeline O’Grady doesn’t think the companies at the school’s Job Fair has the right type of  jobs.

The career fair is approaching, and students are preparing for a day of “opportunity.” MIT’s Global Education & Career Development center (GECD) is holding extended walk-in hours to help students perfect their résumés and interviewing techniques, their firm handshakes and conversation skills, in order to maximize job offers from companies like BP, Chevron, Quizlet, P&G, Intel, GM, TripAdvisor, and Morgan Stanley. There are daily information sessions with Microsoft, AQR, CRA, and Exxon. MIT’s Society of Women Engineers is holding a career fair banquet with opportunities to network with representatives from L’Oreal, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Shell, and Schlumberger.

I’ve been told by upperclassmen that career fair is an opportunity. Classes are cancelled. There are hundreds of companies. They’re waiting for me to come up and talk to them, waiting for me to drop my résumé, waiting for me to apply for an internship. And I need to impress them.

Really, MIT? We need to impress them?

The career fair serves as an effort to funnel some of the world’s brightest minds into lives of comfort and apathy. When did solving the world’s problems mean drilling for more oil than we can afford to burn, coding the next “original” iPhone application, designing more products for consumers to purchase, or consulting these companies so that they can make even more money than they already do?

MIT, I thank you for the exceptional and objective education I’ve received over the past two semesters. But now I need more. I need guidance; I need empowerment and reassurance that despite the current sentiment that finding a “good” job is the most important return from an education, I can still make a difference. I need to know that we are better than Exxon, than TripAdvisor, than P&G, than Quizlet, than BP, than Facebook, than Yelp, and collectively that we have more of a potential to shape the world. I need to know that we are better than career fair.

O’Grady got quite the education in the comments section, including this one: I applaud you for continuing to work on some of these global issues that are meaningful to you, but please do not look down on the other paths people take at MIT. People find fulfillment in multiple ways, and it is not your place to determine one way everybody at MIT should find it.