Fear not. While I know many will say college does not prepare one for the job market, I beg to differ. The point of all of our work is to develop what the Washington Post’s Jeffrey J. Selingo calls “the best skill (a student) can learn in college,” which “is actually the ability to learn.”

If we start by thinking about our first class of the day — perhaps it is an 8 a.m. lecture or a 10:30 a.m. lab — we will find that, for an almost full class, there sure are a lot of empty seats. Brown University’s Daily Herald reports approximately 26.2 percent of students at their university skip class at least once or twice a month.

Now, skipping class does not seem like it would do much harm, and academically, it often does not. We can easily get the notes from our friends and maybe even study a little harder for the test, but the developmental detriments of skipping class are often ignored.

By skipping class, however, we are essentially prioritizing something over our thousand-dollar education. Most of the time we claim to be putting sleep above school, which is, no doubt, a good choice for one’s health.

However, where we often go wrong is when we decided to watch one more episode of Grey’s Anatomy instead of going to bed. Therefore, the next morning when we sleep through class, the priority is not sleep, nor school, but what both were compromised for — another 30 or 45 minutes on Netflix.

Being a chronic binge watcher of “Psych,” I am guilty of this 10 times over. However, I realize as of late the negative effects of choices I make in one instance might not have immediate, lesson-teaching consequences. Therefore, unless I spend some time seriously reflecting, I might not be learning all I need to from my mistakes.

By not doing that, I am missing out on the chance to grow from being the wide-eyed high schooler I was when I first arrived on campus. In his article, Selingo referenced a study that said, “32,000 students at 169 colleges and universities found that 40 percent of college seniors fail to graduate with the complex reasoning skills needed in today’s workplace.”

We are graduating having completed the learning requirements for our degree, but missing the less tangible skills that make one a good employee.

Another study referenced in a USA Today article, alarmingly titled, “Degree alone not enough to prepare grads for workforce” by Melanie Dostis, reported, “students (are) lacking skills in areas such as organization, leadership and personal finance, as well as street smarts.”

I do not think these things could be taught effectively, though. Even if the education system was completely restructured, which many have suggested as a solution, some skills cannot be taught.

Skills like these are ones we learn through our many trials and tribulations. We pick them up along the way and implement them in our lives accordingly. But what has happened is we have stopped not only learning them, but even noticing them at all.

Instead, we focus on keeping our GPA up and hunting down as many internships as our carefully constructed résumé can handle. Our tunnel vision on success has taken over, and as we focus on having the right numbers, answers and experiences, we often pass on opportunities that promote self-development.

So, when one says our college degree is not enough, I understand the concern, but a piece of paper never should be enough to qualify us for something as dynamic as a career. Especially because in that career we will not just be employees, we will be asked to serve as confidants, teammates, problem solvers, mediators, inventors, conversationalists, debaters and leaders.

If we truly expect a degree to teach us more than information and skills for a type of trade, then that is where the problem lies. No one ever said a college degree would guarantee a successful career, because that is determined by knowledge, but also personality.

For our own future, we must choose, every single day, to equip ourselves with the skills that will make us hirable, successful people. Fifty years from now, when we are all retired, it is not going to matter if we could write up a spreadsheet faster than the girl two cubicles away. Instead, it is going to matter if we have learned as much as possible about ourselves and truly grew in those 50 years.