Note to MCW readers: In light of the terror attack in Nice, France last night I want briefly to step away from my primary focus on offering information, insights, and advice about the college experience. Instead, today I offer the essay below as one way of understanding why college matters.
Here we are again. Another act of terror. Another staggering body count and extraordinary number of innocent men, women, and children – children – dead or lying in hospital beds battered and bandaged. Another community reeling, devastated by unimaginable brutality and incomprehensible loss. Another city – Nice – whose name will always be linked to tragedy – Dallas, Orlando, Paris, San Bernardino, Brussels, Istanbul, Charleston…the list goes on and on. To say nothing of Baton Rouge or Falcon Heights or Ferguson, or Chicago.
The totality of the violence and cruelty and death gets to be overwhelming. It is frightening and unsettling and disorienting. The realization that evil exists and its relentless intrusions into our daily lives shake us to the core and leave us confused and uncertain. And so we recoil. We despair. We grow defensive. We assign blame. We seek retribution. Or we change the subject and try to tune it out because it all feels too complex and fraught and hopeless.
This space is about helping you to navigate and understand and succeed in college. And more often than not it will focus on relatively narrow topics and issues – writing a good application essay, the relative importance of standardized tests, dealing with roommate issues, etc. But today, in the all too fresh aftermath of Nice and Dallas and Orlando and the rest, I want to speak to why college matters.
And make no mistake, college matters a great deal.
College matters because the world needs you – the next generation of leaders – to find answers and to stop the madness.
The world needs you to be thoughtful and curious. To ask questions and to know what questions to ask.
The world needs you to seek answers and search for truth. To read and research and experiment and listen.
The world needs you to be effective communicators. To speak and write and express your ideas clearly and convincingly.
The world needs you to be comfortable with complexity. To embrace nuance and understand contradiction and live in ambiguity.
The world needs you to be open-minded and respectful of difference. To understand the breadth of human experiences and to welcome new people and ideas. To celebrate the diversity of cultures that exist in our communities, across the country, and around the globe. To put aside zealous ideology and be willing to challenge what you think and believe.
The world needs you to advance the scope of human knowledge. To develop new technologies and to cure disease. To extend economic opportunity and increase our capacity to care for one another.
The world needs you to be wise. To understand history and philosophy and literature and religion and the arts as well as math and science.
The world needs you to be compassionate and empathetic and kind. To be engaged local and global citizens who understand and relish the responsibility to improve your lives and the lives of those around you.
The world needs you to be teachers and business leaders and engineers. To serve on school boards and town planning boards and corporate boards. To run global conglomerates and restaurants and food pantries and homeless shelters. To produce films and report the news and make art.
The world needs you to put an end to senseless violence and killing and death. To dare to spread understanding and end hate. To take on complicated and vexing issues like guns and economic inequality and inadequate access to education and health care.
The world needs smart, introspective, ambitious, humble, kind, and courageous people to accept the mantle of leadership in all of its many forms. People who, as Margaret Meade said, will “never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world,” because “it is the only thing that ever has.
The world needs you in all these ways and more. And a college education is about all of these things.
College is about learning to think critically and to write clearly and to develop the skills you will need to succeed in all the ways listed above. It’s about engaging with and being open to new people and new ideas. And at its best, college is about optimism and possibility and an unyielding commitment to the idea that we can make the world a better place.
So in the coming days as you think about your college experience please keep in mind the larger purpose it serves as well.
