Finding the Value of Education

Lately, I have had education on the mind. It is certainly something that fascinates me as I certainly have a passion for learning and knowledge. It has taken me many years to see and understand the value of this magnificent tool of opportunity. However, today I am so incredibly thankful for this privilege that has not only crafted me into the person I am today, but has given me the knowledge I need in all of my future endeavors.

Education just happens to be another part of life that falls into the "take it for granted" category. After all, we go through a significant amount of schooling and by the time most of us are 18, school just happens to be another part of life, another thing that we are required to do. Up until this point, almost everyone goes to school and essentially learns the same things in the same ways in the same environment. Sometimes I like to think that up until high school, everyday was pretty much groundhog day. So it comes as no surprise that it is easy to take such a monumental thing for granted. It is embedded in our culture and therefore easy to overlook. However, it is important to understand why it is embedded in our culture. Why were our forefathers, past presidents and politicians so determined to educate people? The answer may seem quite obvious. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." Schooling is an investment: the more knowledgeable a group of people is the greater society will be in general.

Although education is important from a societal perspective, I think it is even more essential to understand why it is so important from a personal perspective. We live in a country with a great amount of faults. We are certainly not perfect in any way, however but we have worked to perfect a stress on education. This is where we need to find personal value in education. We have this amazing opportunity to become educated as our country has made it possible for as many people as possible to become educated. So we have the tools, we just seem to take them for granted more than we should.

The only thing that I ask of myself and of others like me is that we take a personal stake in this amazing opportunity before us. It is so easy to take something that seems so basic for granted. However, this what we don't see is that many people all over the world don't have the luck that we have, they don't have this grand opportunity, and they can't take advantage of it. I ask you all to value your education in your own personal way, whether it be by taking an extra hour to study every night, choosing to do work yourself rather than cheating, maybe staying in one night a week to get homework done instead of going out with friends, or even taking the time every once in a while to thank those who may be helping to pay for your education. In this way we can once again begin to value this institution that has been so commonly disregarded as just another part of life. Take pride in knowledge and education and do your part to make sure that it is not taken for granted.

Making the Most Out of Your Time: Every College Students Nightmare

It's midnight and you have once again spent your entire afternoon being completely unproductive. Honestly, sometimes I feel as though this is just something that happens to everyone and I can be almost sure that it does, however I think that procrastination is even more rampant when you are surrounded by 44,000 other people your age. It's almost impossible to get work done when your best friends live next door and there is almost always something going on. I have spent plenty of nights out with my friends instead of doing any sort of productive work, but finally, about 2 months into the fall semester, I decided that I needed to learn how to make the most of my time.

The most important thing that I have learned about time management is that there is a time for everything. Again, as a college student it may not seem like it, but I promise you all that it is true. We just need to make time for the things that we need to do first (ie. studying and doing homework) and use the time left over to do things we want to do (ie. going out with friends and watching Netflix). Although, it may be difficult at first to be productive, with a little bit of practice, it becomes an easier issue to tackle

Secondly, prioritizing allows us to not only accomplish the things that we truly need to accomplish, but also it grants us a significant amount of free time. I do this every day before I begin anything, quite frankly, because a lot of times the most important things are not always the things that I want to do first. Sometimes I find myself working on something that's due in a week instead of what is due the next day and then find myself having to rush to get everything done. Obviously, these types of habits are unproductive, but until I realized the affect that this habit on my work, I really saw no need for change. However, with such a busy schedule in college, I have learned to always use a planner in order to properly plan out my assignments and my activities. I prioritize my work and now I no longer have to worry that I will not have times to complete all of my assignments!


So, plan out when you need to do homework everyday and decide how and when each thing should be done. When you can sufficiently complete all of your work in a timely manner, you will find that you have more free time than you ever was possible!

Self-Pride: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Self-pride has a good connotation in theory. We see it all the time in the movies: the football star scores a touchdown in the last second of the game, the surgeon pats herself on the back after finishing a successful heart surgery. Of course, these are certainly things to be proud of, but are they truly realistic? Is the only time I should feel worthy of self-praise after I complete a task of similar magnitude? 

Honestly, it's hard not to fall into believing that you have to be the absolute best at something for it to be valuable. We live in a fast paced world and quite frankly, a fast paced country. In a place where people are constantly pushing to be "the best" at everything, when the only things that seem to matter are the things associated with big accomplishments, well it's hard not to lose yourself in it all. After all, we can't all be the President of the United States or the world's best neurosurgeon (as much as we all may want to be).

However, there is something so vitally important about taking pride in the little things that we accomplish. Granted, I’ve never walked on the moon or ended world hunger, but I have begun to realize the gravity of the little marks that I have made on the world, just as you all have. The truth is, we need to give more value to those tiny accomplishments as stupid as they may be because they make society better (even if it’s just a tiny change).

The point is that the last math exam that you scored an A on makes a mark on the world. The way you complimented that girl on her shoes in bio class made her day just a little bit better. The door you held open for the kid behind you is a simple act of kindness that made that person’s day just a little bit easier, and the last cookie in the cafeteria that you left to the student behind you, well that made the world a tiny bit brighter. All in all, we need to take pride in the seemingly worthless things we do on a day to day basis. A little good goes a long way, so why don’t we cherish those little accomplishments.

Criticizing the "Norms" of Society

Humans are truly fascinating animals. Unlike almost any other animal of our kind, humans are born with essentially no knowledge of the world and without the ability to take care of themselves in any way. The factor that makes humans so interesting is that we learn almost everything we know from the world around us. That being said, humans are extremely malleable, but this malleability lends itself to the possibly of "molding" people to have unswayable ideas which many times blocks the ability for society to progress and better the lives of the people living in it. 

I see the inability to get past certain ideas that have been so deeply rooted into society all the time and I would be hypocritical if I didn't say that I see it in myself as well. Coming from an American, white, middle-class family, there are many privileged ideas that I have that are the result of my environment and my family. In thinking about many of these ideas, it had never really occurred to me, and still doesn't at times, that not all of these ideas and norms are necessarily correct or true in any form. After looking through the same lens for 18 years, it honestly is hard to see and understand things from other perspectives, however without criticizing or maybe even just taking the time to understand the things that we have just began to consider "normal" in our society. 

I think its important to think critically about these norms because the way we do things is not necessarily going to be the way that others would do the exact same things. Take for example, capitalism. The United States has had a capitalist economic system since it's independence from Great Britain and honestly, since then, not many things have changed. My parents raised me to believe that the United States was the best country in the world. The only country with complete independence. Not until last year, did I take a moment to think about these broad statements that I found completely engrained in my brain. The thing is, looking from an economic standpoint, yes, the US is pretty well off, however have we ever taken a moment to think just about the quality of life in the United States in comparison to other parts of the world? The answer is no, and the reason is that we as humans don't always naturally question the things that we have been taught growing up, we consider them facts. So after I began to think about this complete "independence" that my parents had always assured me that I had, just based on the fact that we live in the United States, I began to think about some of the effects on society that capitalist systems can present. With such a high focus on the economy, many times we completely forget about social and environmental issues that are also important factors that determine our quality of life. So is the US still the best country in the world if we often times forget 2 important factors that affect our lives in such large ways? Maybe, maybe not, but the great part is that its an opinion and NOT a fact, so you get to decide.

The point here is that not everything we hear and see everyday in our environments is necessarily the best, most productive, or most satisfying way to do things. To really move forward in society we need to find the root to the basic issues that we find ourselves having everyday. So be progressive and think outside the box because progressive people are the people that will keep our country and possibly the world afloat. 

The Life Decision Blues

Recently I have been completely fixated in an inner battle of what I want to be for the rest of my life. I have always wanted to be a doctor, honestly it has to be one of my very first memories. It has become part of my identity. I have always been quite a nurturing person, which I think lends right to such an occupation. So it makes sense that as I have begun to question following my life long dream, I have had many problems making any type of decisions about my future.

In the consideration of many other occupations, I have begun to feel almost as if I am drowning. I am drowning in a world full of opportunities and from bird's eye view, that seems like quite a nice problem to have, however it from my point of view it seems as though the walls are closing in on me and I am left wallowing in all of these crazy decisions that will affect the rest of my life. Normally, I feel as though I accept defeat well. I know and can accept my weaknesses and I am quick to get over those types of things typically. However, I am quite literally stuck on this and so I have to assume that the world in which I have grown up in has something to do with my figurative state of mind.

The thing is, no one ever told me that I should be a doctor. I was never attracted to the idea with visions of money. There was just always something in me that was so attracted to the medical field. As a child, most of my punishments had some correlation with being caught watching surgery on the discovery life channel. Which is quite the opposite of what one would expect from a young child. However, in recent years I have begun to doubt my life long dream. Maybe its the intense amount of work that has scared me away or the intensity of the student body or just the intensity of it all in general (I don't work well with intensity). However, should I really give up something that is so tied to my identity just out of fear? I really am not sure. I do know one thing. I find this to be such a big dilemma because I never want to be disappointed in myself in the future. I don't want to look back and look at my accomplishments as failures. I don't want to fall into some rogue job that will never fulfill my search for happiness and most of all I don't want to change the dreams in which my entire identity has been built upon.

So I want to leave this post open. I hope that this prompts you all to look deep within yourselves and find closure in similar choices. I think a huge component of our individual happiness is living life in the moment as opposed to the future. So should I leave these choices to the universe with the hope that everything will turn out alright in the end? Or should I focus on the future and focus on making the right choices today in order to ensure myself happiness in the future? I'll leave this question up to you. What would you do?

Why we actually do need feminism

Why we don't need feminism
So this week I wanted to do something a little bit different. Recently I have been seeing a lot of these anti-feminist blogs and I just wanted to share a few things about why this makes my skin crawl.

So here's the thing, feminism has been shown in a horrible light for the past several decades. Some women have taken on feminism and basically gone way overboard. They have created political lesbianism so to speak. They are women who disagree with patriarchal values and believe that the only way to dissolve these values is to change the system altogether. However, these are not true feminists and this is where people find misunderstandings.

The point is, feminism is not a giant male hate group. In fact, we are just the opposite. The definition of feminism is to create EQUALITY for EVERYONE. Just because women are now allowed to vote doesn't mean that we are truly equal. We need to look at the world through a critical lens. We need to form educated opinions.

I think for the good of everyone we need to get behind this movement. We need to stop oppression. Not just for women but for men as well and I strongly believe that feminism is the answer to these societal woes. The truth is, we are not all equal, but we can change it and I have the confidence that we will.

The Strength to Continue On

With the craziest part of the semester underway, I have decided to step away from my usual type of blog post to give myself and hopefully all of you some hope and strength to carry on to the end of this semester. Sometimes I find myself doubting that there will be an end to all of the madness of everyday life. My mom always says that college is like drinking from a firehouse. Although, it is a very odd simile to say the least, it has started to take on new shape and new meaning as the days go on. College is a completely different experience. We have thousands of assignments thrown at us, essays to write, problems to practice, lab reports to complete and thanks to my bad luck (I'm sure I'm not the only one with this issue) they always seem to be due on the same day. Then on top of all of that as if we weren't stressed already there are exams every week. I can honestly say that there are weeks were I feel as though I am treading in all of the work I have to do, with my head barely above it all of course. But the thing is, in the moment it is so hard to forget that these little details are not really what's important. What's important is the fact that we are here to learn. We are here to create a database of knowledge in order to go on to do bigger and better things. The truth is, that B on the test you got last week is not the end all be all. We have to begin to take college on not as a competition to earn the highest grade, but a competition with ourselves to work the hardest that we can and learn as much as we can from this amazing experience. Not everyone has this opportunity, and I don't say that to make you or myself crazy, but it's important to keep in mind. Knowledge is the most powerful weapon, we just need to learn how to acquire it. Just remember, knowledge is not measured by your GPA, its measure by the effort that you put into it.