The Value of an Education

The Value of an Education

"You can lade a man up to th' university, but ye can't make him think." -Finley Peter Dunne. Often time on campus a student is found partying more than studying or just failing classes like physical education. Not sure how a person fails physical education when the person is a football player but that is another subject. As I examine the idea of a student not having the drive to be successful I wonder why. How can a person go through life without founding any form of ambition? A person is willing to settle for what is being presented to them without questioning or knowing there is more. Not every student enters college without a strong understanding on the value of an education but those who don't have the same understanding on the value, why not? Why waste your time, tax payer's money and parent's money coming to school only to not go to class and later fail the class? There are many reasons why students enter college with little to no ambition, goals, or focus only to reap the consequences of their actions later; lack of maturity, lack of awareness, and lack of desire.

Maturity has been defined differently by many sources on the internet but I have come up with a definition of my own. Maturity is defined as a psychological stage in a person's life which indicates a point when that person begins to accept responsibility for one owns actions. Maturity has no relationship to age. Age is merely a process in which each person experience like clockwork year by year until death. Maturity on the other hand is not a calculated process. A set of twins born on the same day within minutes of the other are perceived to be identical but with different personalities. One twin is more mature than the other. The mature twin is all about doing work first and playing last while the other twin is the opposite. Even though both are the same age each is on a different mature level. The mature twin has the potential of early success while the other twin has to experience more of life hardships before taken things serious enough to discover his or her success. Some students enter college having experienced at least one dramatic event which has either pushed their mature level to a new high or the event was not dramatic enough to effect change. However, at the end, each student is on a different maturity level because of the different experiences and lessons learned. Lack of maturity is not the only factor affecting a student's inability to focus in class and produce successful grade, there is another piece to the puzzle, desire.

Desire is defined by The Free Dictionary as a wish or longing, request or petition, and passion. Each of these words used to describe the word desire is manifested in the mind so they are all psychological just like maturity. Desire and maturity goes hand and hand with one another. Desire however