Education is key

Education is key. Whether it is formal education or self-taught, the need for expanding one’s knowledge is necessary to lead a fulfilling life.

From the day we’re born until the day we die, education is an ongoing process. We learn to breathe and take our first steps. We learn to depend on others and accept that one day we will die. And, somewhere along the way, we go to school.

From an exhibit in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea

Some may not make it past high school, while others, like me, are lucky to attend college.

I, for one, have not always realized how lucky I am to be at Baylor. Every year, there are people who donate hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of dollars towards scholarships that allow students to further their intellectual thought—not to mention improve their chances at employment and making a living.

Though I sometimes have three exams on one day, pull an all-nighter or read 100 pages of quite possibly the most boring book ever written, I still feel privileged to be here. I have professors that are excited about the material they teach and challenge me to expand my way of thinking.

I am grateful for the care they put into their lesson plans, and their desire to pass the wisdom they have learned throughout the years onto my peers and I.

I sometimes wonder what life would have been like had I not gone to college. Though I wouldn’t have a piece of paper to frame, justifying my intellect and understanding of the world, I would have still had the same opportunity to gain that knowledge.

Libraries are a wonderful invention that further scholarship. They contain thousands of books on every topic imaginable. These books, some of which were banned at one point in history, contain the key to life. There are books documenting the Civil Rights, the Holocaust and other events and subjects that give us insight into the past so that we may change in the future.

These libraries hold the key to knowledge and knowledge is a component of education, thus education is key.

The thing that makes education so gratifying is that it’s the only thing in life that is completely, 100% free. You can control whether you gain knowlege and you can chose to be an intellectual person.

Unless you get hit by an unfortunate case of Alzheimer’s, not a single person can take that knowledge away from you.