What is college for?

prompt: This fall semester is beginning in a world that is in the middle of a profound change. We are grappling with a global pandemic, the uncertainties of which are with us even as this assignment is being written (July 2020). This past spring, the Arctic recorded its highest temperature ever. And as a nation, we have begun an overdue reckoning with our history of racial injustice and inequality.

So in this moment of change, what is college for?  For this assignment, you need to reflect on the purpose of a university education right now and reflect on how your own ambitions align with your response to that question of purpose.

Remind: Dont make your essay a list of points in paragraph form, and certainly dont make it a 5-paragraph essay. (In other words, you shouldnt present something like: Here are three purposes, with a paragraph for each one, followed by a summary/conclusion paragraph!) Instead, make your essay both more personal and more analytical than that.

This essay can be relatively informal in tone, and you can certainly use I. At the same time, you need to show some serious intellectual inquiry.

The best essays dont shut conversations down by delivering a right answer or by proving somethinginstead they spark more and more informed conversation. Explore a tension or question. Anchor it in your own specific life experience.  Welcome complexity. Dont be afraid to discuss counterarguments to your own. Think about how you can provoke your fellow classmates to think more.

Here are some questions that can spark thinking:
How much should college be about personal growth? How much about grades? How much about asking big questions?  How much about everything that happens outside the classroom? How much about following your own interests? How much about trying new things? How much about learning time-honored traditions? How much about challenging tradition? How much about community? How much about individual freedom? How much about weighing your obligations to others? How much about seeking people like you? How much about negotiating differences? The questions go on and on. Some incoming college students have thought a lot about this. Some not much at all. For many students, the answers change as they move through college.