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Sarah Stover TELL Step 1

I think the purpose of a college education is to prepare students for life. College has so much to offer and if people take advantage of that, they will learn life skills, not just academics, that will help them to be successful in the future. You learn to be independent and to take care of problems on your own. You further develop social skills by either talking with friends or addressing professors. You're provided with oppurtunities to work on skills in communication, leadership, and problem-solving. You make mistakes, and you learn from them. I feel that college is like an in-between step between living at home and living on your own, and it provides students with an environment in which they can figure out what they want to do and who they want to be in the future.

I think it's very hard to answer this question because there are different definitions of what it means to be educated. There are people who are "academically smart" and those who are "street smart" and people who are "smart" in other areas of life. Plus, being educated means something different in China than it does in France. I think what I'm beginning to see this semester is that being educated is more about the experiences you've learned from rather than the amount of schooling you've had. The stereotype that educated people have a great vocabulary, dress professionally, and have a successful career isn't accurate. A person can be educated, but maybe he couldn't make the payments on his house and now he's homeless. Personally, I feel that we have to look past the appearances of people, past the first impressions, and see how educated people really are.

What experiences have you had with education that led you to this belief?
I personally know people who I think are very educated, but couldn't afford to go to college. Or maybe college wasn't the right fit, so they got a job and worked their way up to a management position. My grandmother would have loved to go to college. She was very good in math and science, but her father told her she was supposed to get married and have children. So she didn't further her schooling, but since she has had so many experiences and seen the world. My Uncle Bob got a job in a company right out of high school, and worked his way up to one of the top positions in the company. I consider both educated even though they might not have as many years of schooling as a doctor or a lawyer.

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