The College Education

Kate Mather, who is a student in Wheaton college of Massachusetts, narrates her story about the attitudes she has created to college education before she joined, during her lifetime in the college and even after completing. Just like other people, she had a belief that college education is vital and that it is one of the main paths for any individual to succeed well in future. However, she frankly admits that though education is an essential asset to acquire, it is not the only key to success. She clears the air that those who fail to join college will end up being failures. She terms these thoughts as mere insinuation raised that has no foundations in life.

Kate is reminding us that some years back in America, only the lucky people in the society had an access to education because they were in a position to pay it. However, after some period, the government introduced compulsory level education for overall regions of the country. Individuals were supposed to attend secondary education before enrolling for tertiary institutional education such as universities and poly techniques for specialization specified areas or become professionals. The people ended having various options for studies according to individuals desires, where some became doctors, lawyers and others - teachers. The government and the citizens regarded achievement in education as the main key for the country to fulfill its state dreams. Secondly, the Americans took it as the main source of wealth and income, failing to consider and value education as a source of knowledge to individuals so as to live a better life.

White-collar job education, for instance, attending a college and earning you a degree, is assumed as the most important form of education that one can have. Vocational education linked with training individuals to become, for instance, plumbers, electricians and cobblers were termed boring and thus were neglected. The people forget that a plumber or a garbage collector is as essential as an accountant is, because the latter cannot do the work of the other. Both must complement each other in duties. They fail to ask themselves that if all of us become doctors or lawyer, who will build for us houses and who will fix electricity cable in our bungalows; hence, though college learning is vital, we need to appreciate diversity in training in order to have all sorts of job specializes.

Regardless of the fact that most people join colleges to acquire formal education, there are various challenges bedeviling them, for example, financial limitations. People who enrolled in college at the same year end up completing and graduating in different periods just because of these. As a result, they end up having a difference in life positions such as income, marriages and even job levels. Kate suggests that it is very unfair to compare these people as fate and destiny has drawn their life graphs differently. She reminds us that these people were zealous in life and education just like the others. Furthermore, it is not compulsory for us all after completing secondary education level to go and join colleges. If one has a talent of boxing, one can go and train as a martial artist among other things. Another example is that if a person is talented as a musician, he/she can open up a studio and record his/her own music or even start an entertainment band. As a result, one will inevitably emerge as a very successful person because he/she is doing so in passion. This is true as most successful and popular artists and musicians frankly mention that they did not even complete their secondary education, leave alone joining a college for further studies. Because of their talents, most of them, like Michael Jackson, are billionaires. They are just paid by their talents, regardless of the educational level they possess. Surprisingly, some of them employ their classmates, who topped in secondary level and were awarded college level vacancies, as their managers or personal assistants.

Although the author admits that college education is very essential because there are skills you can acquire here only, she claims that failure of an individual to join tertiary level of education is not supposed to be taken to mean that people are not complete in life and should not be taken as mere level individuals. She call all of us to embrace diversification and to accept that each of us has a talent and thus, it is not obligatory for us all to join colleges in order to be regarded as success people in life. However, she warns us that college education given an opportunity should be attended. The reason behind this is that the skill acquired here may be used as a benchmark for achieving the dreams of the talent we own. Kate recalls how she acquired one of the most vital life skills while being in the college, which any literate individual cannot stay without - writing. Besides, she learned social life skills that have helped her interact and socialize with friends and relatives well. This has minimized her conflicts. Moreover, college life has enabled her gain communication skills necessary for expressing herself, thus it is essential to have a college education. Kate claims that she hopes her education will not only make her climb to the ladder of her carrier but also serve as a source of wealth, as many of the citizens believes.

The author closes her narration by reminding us that these perceptions that for any of us to succeed must acquire formal education from the colleges, universities in order to prosper in daily life are baseless believes, which should be seriously condemned and avoided to follow. In life, we have various ways we can follow and end up succeeding only if we trust in our talents and erase completely those tainted thoughts about technical and vocational jobs. Kate, thus, concludes that for her to be more successful in life and help her society, she will only need to use the formal educational skills from the college to make a decision on who she wants to be in the future.

Reflection

From my perception and experience, I support Kate, as most of us believe that going for further studies in college and universities and acquiring a degree or even a master, then securing a great job in one of these big offices in the city is the best thing that you can have in life. The few educated and employed starts seeing the unlucky ones as failures and a problem to their advancement. They even go further to scorn them or even use them as their domestic slaves. A good example that I have witnessed is a boss misusing his house cleaner, by waking her up at dawn to commence house cores while he sleeps. He harasses the house cleaner sexually and scorn her all sorts of dirty words. Whenever, she demands respect, the boss says that she is not worth it because she is not educated. To my mind, this is intolerable, and we should not use our education level to harm others. Our parents and those close to the government and us are to blame for making us belief that college education is the only key to a successful life. We need to embrace diversity in life as all of us are given with different talents and abilities.

However, from my point of view, college education can fully transform individuals, earn them income and make them more successful in the future. For instance, Bill Gates, who earns billions of dollars annually, was highly aided by his college education in Harvard University in discovering the Microsoft system.

On the whole, I find Kate’s argument not only persuasive but also full of wealthy ideas that we as young people should copy for us to come and take pride that we are the people whom we had wanted to become. Unemployment is one urgent problem biting us, and if we have been thinking like Kate that we could definitely avoid it. Thus, I give Kate a credit for such a wonderful and persuasive advice for the youth, who believe that college education is the only key to success.