Personal Meditation No. 141

“Your beliefs are your actions. What you say is just what you think.”

Embrace the Within

College has really changed BUT it remains the same. I hear all the time from my “conservative” friends about how colleges and universities are destroying the minds of America’s youth. How professors and classes are destroying the core values of America. I am always impressed by this statement. That is a lot to ask of colleges and professors.

I have spent two days out of the past five touring some colleges on the east coast of the states with my daughter and they aren’t the horror story “conservatives” would have you believe. And of course they are not a utopia either. They’re just schools.

Folks like to get scared of education and systems and rightfully so. Systems of education are rife with bad ideas and bad goals BUT I am only focused on small colleges at the moment. I think those institutions have done a wonderful job of weathering system, time, and change. And I applaud those small schools for still being viable in the era of big everything.

There is a lot of same going around the states today. Same gas stations, same churches, same schools, same thought, same news, same life . . . A nation of uniform sameness. The labels on the outside may differ but the inside is all the same.

So, I champion anything that seems different and small schools are different to me. They don’t take up a lot of unnecessary space. They don’t offer a bunch of majors. They don’t want to be everything to everyone. They are what they are. And that I applaud.

These college visits I sit back and rarely speak because they are not about me. My time in college has possibly ended unless I go back to teach again. BUT my kids are on the verge of getting there. And they need to speak. They need to question. They need to embrace the experience.

So, even though I may want to enroll at every small college I visit. Even though I may want to work there. I know that they are not places of evil. They are not destroying anything that does not warrant destruction. They are places of change as places of learning must always be.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.