Why should we go to College?

Jarmaine Hughes (Age 19)

Email, Jarmainedb88@yahoo.com

Cell, 832-462-9970

Why should we go to College?

                Why should we go to college is usually answered along the likes of “if you don’t you can’t get a job” or “You won’t be able to leave this place”. Well even though I believe that both of these are very good reasons to go to college, jobs and way out demeaning, dangerous situations are very good reasons to go, but I do not believe that these are anywhere near the most important reasons to try to obtain a college degree. I believe the driving force for going to college is to LEARN, and to become a better and more knowledgeable person.

                There is a disparity in voter turnout between race, between age, and between socioeconomic levels, but the largest gap is in education. The more educated vote. This may seem like an irrelevant statement in an article pulling the youth on to college campuses but if you delve deeper into the statement you’ll notice that since the more educated vote (those who go to college) the more educated also have their voice heard louder than the common man. The more educated have their desires noted and accounted for where those who don’t go to college on average do not. The law, budgets, the president, even if we didn’t vote still affects our everyday lives.

                Going to college embeds you with the knowledge to understand not only the trade that you wish to learn but the society you wish to live in, if you desire to learn. Going to class and becoming the best accountant on the planet is fine and dandy but if I bring up gun control on college campuses, a topic that will affect every one of us wanting to take a class and learn a trade, how much would your infinite knowledge of numbers help you understand the severity of a law such as that? This is why the driving force “go and be able to get a future job” should not be the prevailing force but rather the desire to learn and become a more knowledgeable person.

                Jobs will come but the opportunity to obtain quality knowledge maybe fleeting. In other words, if you go to college with the mindset that you are there to learn as much as you can as best as you can, you will acquire not only the information needed to learn your trade but also a plethora of information that will help you become a more knowledgeable and well-rounded person. Though say you went only for the trade, with the mindset “this is what I want to do, this is what I want to learn”, who is to say how much you will miss? Whatever your motivation I urge you to go to college, but I also urge you to consider learning once you get there.