Journal of Student Research 2018

90 Journal Student Research to think. Education gives us that. A habit of life-long learning built by a liberal arts education literally liberates the mind, freeing us from tyranny. Without the weapon of free thought, we are at the mercy of the powerful to define our reality. This is not my essay. There are stacks of essays about changing the world, read by discriminating panels in quiet rooms all over the country. As you read this, please understand that these thousand words do not constitute mine. What I’m taking from my liberal arts education must be written in the world to be true. I hope I get the chance to write until my pen runs out of ink, miles and miles of ink, gallons of ink to carve words that give shape to the hopes and dreams of humankind. I would use the last piece of paper in the free world to write words that might change the minds and hearts of men, and when that runs out, scrape a message of love into the walls until my fingertips are ragged and bloody. Let me speak up when I see injustice, let my responses be to shelter the weary and protect the vulnerable. May I fight for children’s right to learn and fight for them to have a land of clean water and forest to wander when they are grown. Let that be my weapon, my promise. Let that be my essay. And when my children ask me about what I learned at college, I hope that I can show them a path that didn’t exist until I walked it. I hope they see a group of people walking that corridor with me, friends and colleagues I might not have considered before. I want to gather around kitchen tables and have the kind of talks that go beyond mortgages and social media, and instead build an active citizenship. I hope that my little girls will grow up with an engaged community which asks hard questions and is willing to work together towards hard truths. I want a world where millions of little girls are going to grow into adults who see science and art and mystery as valuable- -girls who question the established order, and who bravely and kindly participate in their life. I want to raise little boys who are brave in their vulnerability and generous in their exchange. I hope they work together to tear down walls, to builder longer tables, and to build the kind of world that we so desperately need, not the world we deserve. Changing the world must start within your arm’s reach, but if you make sure to keep other people close enough to touch, close enough to reach farther together, that span extends and extends across the space and time. My education didn’t start with me, and it won’t end with me. Let that be my essay.