The final chapter of high school is ending for many seniors this month. In addition, the class of 2020 is nearing the completion of their first year of the college experience. Both are milestones in the lives of us young people as we are embarking on the first steps of the rest of our lives. As the graduating seniors prepare to head off to college and the current college students are solidifying and diving deeper into their majors, it’s important to remember how valuable our education is. I know you may have heard this a million times growing up because I heard all the time as well, but I never truly understood it until coming to college.

Fellow students, as well as adults, if you are like me, you enrolled into college because it was the norm and it would eventually help you get a job and secure your financial future. While this is an understandable and acceptable motive to enroll into higher education, it is, unfortunately, the mentality students choose to maintain over the next four years.

To this day, the most popular major among college students is Business Administration and Management. Not exactly much of a surprise considering how wealthy one can become in this career field. Now I am in no way bashing or degrading those who study it for I have many close friends who truly love the economics of business and the running of a company. However, it is important to remember that the money isn’t everything.

When you reduce paper money down to it’s most pure, natural, and elemental form it is worth virtually nothing. It is given a societal value that aims many to believe that the accumulation of wealth is the key to happiness. Therefore, we have many students going into careers they truly don’t love or parents and elders telling them to “go where the money is” and neglecting the true reason for enrolling into college: to receive an education.

The ultimate goal of a formal education is to teach us how to think because more often than not, we grew up being taught what to think. We were taught to believe that education is some preparatory process. That we learn the material, study the material, regurgitate the material in a test of knowledge, and then forget it all. By going through this process countless amounts of times, we’re expected to be ready for whatever career we choose.Yet kids are going through life not having a clue what they want to do with it.

Education is not supposed to be the full instruction guide, it's the template. It’s going through the critical thinking process when presented with new information, instead of blindly inhaling it, that will allow students to reach enlightenment because that’s what it is. Education is an enlightening process. A sacred institution.

This year I’ve dived into the works of W.E.B Du Bois and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in which they explained education as the underlying foundation of a society, not the extension of capitalism. It is only through education and reinforcing that foundation that a society is able to truly elevate. In fact, it is from Rousseau and his work on The Social Contract that the United States of America is able to enjoy the government and political system we have today. He was able to do this because he knew the value of free thinking, and Rousseau was one of the main advocates for education during his time.

There are countless thinkers like Rousseau who have contributed to modern society and indulged themselves in philosophy, English, history, and the humanities who we revere today as the greatest thinkers of all time. Yet, when someone in their 20s today tries to do the same thing they are met with comments like “What are you going to do with a liberal arts major? It’s so pointless. What real job are you going to get with a stupid major like that?”

As a communication major hoping to add one of the humanities to my studies, I have been met with the same comments. However, it doesn’t bother me, because I’ve finally realized something that they have yet to even grasp: our education is not for our own benefit. Although we may want it to be, it’s not. It’s for the world. It’s for our community. It’s for us to create and invoke change wherever there is a need for it.

In a world where there is no guarantee of forever, and many things are temporary, your education is the one thing that can never be taken away from. I only wished I had realized this sooner and taken my education more seriously. However, I’m more than thankful for my amazing teachers in high school. Through motivation, understanding and tough love, they showed me what I could become if I was willing to work for it. And there’s no way I can ever repay them for everything they’ve ever done for me, except be what they envisioned me to be and even more. Teachers are severely underpaid, another crime against education, so our reward to them is recognizing all their hard work to make us better people and thank them by becoming even better.

Never forget the value of education. Whatever you give to it, it will return in full and if you give it your heart and soul it will give unto you a gift more precious than anything this world has to offer: freedom.