Jane Jacobs on Getting an Education

Jane Jacobs, famous for writing The Death and Life of Great American Cities, "studied at Columbia University in the School of General Studies for two years, taking courses in geology, zoology, law, political science, and economics." About that, she said:

For the first time I liked school and for the first time I made good marks. This was almost my undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the property of Barnard College at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take, it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education.