Meaning Of a College Education

My view of education has changed drastically since my return from Africa. Prior to my trip I enjoyed learning and was eager to do well in school but I realize now that I hadn’t valued it nearly as much as I should have, and not for the right reasons. After seeing how eager the children were to learn and how genuinely they wanted to gather as much knowledge as possible, it has made me appreciate my education more than I thought it would. People are constantly exposed, through books and movies, to the idea that a big enough event would change your life and that you would become a different person by the credits if you’d experienced what the actors did. I’d heard stories specifically about how life altering somewhere like Africa would be to a western teenager, but still I was skeptical. I am not a person to be easily moved and I didn’t expect that kind of powerful shift in thinking to happen to me as my life does not now nor has it ever resembled a movie. It is excruciating cliché, but the month I was there did change me, and in many ways it re-formed how I look at several facets of the world. This is highlighted in my views of education. Now I feel beyond lucky that I have access to the level of education that should never be taken for granted and feel that it would be almost disrespectful to every one of those children if I were to neglect or in some way marginalize my educational opportunities. Of course college is a means to the end goal of a career as is the byproduct of our society, but it is my duty, and the duty of every person who has even the whisper of a chance at an education to pursue it.