Life is a time line with birth and death endpoints and clear stages along the way that represent significant events. Sorry to be cynical, but the events are not distinctly separate bullet points. They’re arrows that prepare and point you towards the next challenge in life, and then the next, and the one that follows. Every arrow points towards the inevitable finish. Like the board game Life implies, these events are a sequence where high school prepares you for college, college for your job, your job for a stable family life (i.e. wife, kids, a house, and a mortgage), and onwards to death. If you are content with seeing your life out in pre-existing stages, each created by society to prepare you docilely for the next event, then stop reading.

I am closer to 19 than 18, and only two months shy of the next “stage.” I can smell college just over the edge of summer and I’m anxious. Just the other day I began filling out the acceptable use policy, alcohol education requirement, and the ominous housing preference form for my first semester of college. The list of forms goes on, but they all pose the same question: “Are you ready for real life?”

Real life, in my opinion, is defined by the reality of consequences for the first time. American law doesn’t force anyone into college, but the law declares secondary education mandatory until a student is 16 years of age. Our government basically says it’s up to you after high school. College, as an institution, does not exist to nanny its students, but rather to offer outlets of education and preparation. With this philosophy of further education as optional – but encouraged by society and the government – it is implied that students are to enter college at their own free will and take advantage of all educational opportunities with their own discretion.

College is about learning as much diverse information as you can and encountering life at its real pace. That is why a liberal arts education is the most beneficial to all college bound members of society. Students of liberal arts education programs have the diversity of knowledge that career focused programs don’t offer. For example, two students – student A and student B – attend college with the intention of becoming doctors. Student A enters a pre-med program that covers the requirements, but doesn’t waste time on non-medical related courses. Student B majors in South-American history while taking chemistry, biology, physiology, anatomy, and psychology – requirements that compose the pre-med major. Student A does well and enters medical school, where his or her pre-med education serves the purpose of earning a medical degree. Student B enters the same medical school, with memories and experiences from what they learned while studying for their “useless” major. They both have long careers in medicine, but student A finds they don’t know much outside of blood and guts. Society holds student A up to the white-collar status that they’ve earned after hundreds of thousands of dollars and ten years of education, but student A knows no more about art, literature, and history than an assembly line worker, who has been earning money instead of spending it on education for 10 years more than the doctor. Student B took advantage of his or her expensive education. They spent time studying in Buenos Aires as part of an abroad program for history majors, they traveled Europe to look at art as an off-shoot interest they developed after seeing European missionary artwork in textbooks and they subscribe to multiple newspapers so they can monitor the world they grew to love after seeing different cultures. They both help society as doctors, but student B’s life stretches far past the confines of medicine, where as student A is restricted by his or her limited knowledge of the world around them.

Further education is full to the brim with experiences and knowledge that will not be offered again for the rest of your life. If you enter college with the intention of gaining experience so you can do your job as effectively as possible, you are wasting at least four years. They will show you exactly what you need to do on the first day of work, making the last four years an ample amount of irrelevant but related background information. This is not to say that studying science is not crucial to medicine, studying law is unimportant to a career in government, and studying economics is a waste for business, but without diversity of knowledge every college student is missing out on the purpose of college. Every human, regardless of career, lives a life outside of his or her job. The world is built on multiple kinds of understandings such that knowledge of culture and the world can connect you with people that your  career would never bring you into contact with. Diverse educational interests can only make a person more interesting.

Liberal arts colleges and universities are a privilege. The majority of young Americans don’t have the financial freedom to study what interests them while training for a career, but those that do are, in a sense, responsible to take advantage of all the learning that surrounds them. They are responsible for enriching their minds and assisting our society with its knowledge threshold. As elitist as that sounds, it is reality. If the opportunity to vary your education presents itself, then take advantage. One should always enjoy what they do for a living, but they should not limit their focus in life so much that they miss the beautiful things. Don’t restrict your view of life by focusing your education on serving your career; you never know where you might find a new passion if you don’t look.