by: Tim Johnson

At this point in life I am a self-sufficient and independent person ready to take the next step in life. As I am finishing high school I clearly see my future goals that I can potentially derive from college education. The high school experience helped me understand that education is not all about reading textbooks and writing research papers. Even though those components are also extremely important and without them education would not live up to its definition, I understand education as a gradual process of learning that has a far greater scope than simply attending lectures and doing homework assignments. There are much more things I have yet to learn.

I view college education as a global learning process that would encompass learning new things that will have some positive influence on my personality in the future. Studying the various disciplines offered by a university is important but college experience should not be confined to that academic experience only. I consider college education a much more valuable experience than high school because living on campus far away from my family will have very significant impact on my personality. Living on my own will help me assess my personal skills, and ascertain the areas of strength and weakness. I consider on-campus residence opportunity a crucial part of college education because I will get a chance to discover things about myself that I never though I had. There will definitely be pleasant moments as well as hardships but it is the only way to test a person. It is much better to know your weaknesses and strengths rather than staying ignorant of their presence. Even if a person has many weaknesses it is a much better option to discover them and then fight each particular weakness rather than overlooking the drawbacks and shortcomings of one's personality.

I consider college education to be of extreme importance because it contributes to the overall process of transformation of a teenager into an adult. Some teenagers never overgrow that stage because they have never been exposed to independent, self-sufficient lifestyle. Always living with parents who care about a person and solve all problems that arise along the way is not always good it terms of their contribution to personal development of a child. Life is difficult and the best way to learn effective strategies and techniques of dealing with future problems and difficulties is to face them with an open mind and open eyes. I am not advocating lack of parental care and support. By no means should you get that impression. On the contrary, a child must be assured that parents are always there to help in case he or she encounters a problem that is too difficult to solve on one's own. College experience provides that environment where young people can face the realities of life and see if they can deal with their personal problems themselves. I am sure that college education will give me a chance to become an independent and self-sufficient person capable of dealing with everyday life situations. I consider that to be a very important component of college education. Also, I believe that college education will give me an ample opportunity to improve most of my skills and shape my inner world in the sense that I will be able to critically comprehend what goes on in the present-day society and have my personal opinion about various issues. I hope to meet new people from various cultural and social backgrounds who surely have valuable experience to share and different ideas to communicate. I believe that it is through communication with other human-beings that people are able to learn new things and generate original ideas. Those are the things that I expect to get out of college education besides the information that I will learn from the textbooks and informative lectures delivered by experienced professors.