I had the chance to do some reflecting about why I was going to college. I had this fantasy that involved me taking a fraction of my tuition dollars and traveling the world for a couple of years, settling in some remote cabin in Idaho piled with books and just reading everything. But I came here. We all came here. Which means that, in some way, we decided that education meant crashing those ideas around with other engaged curious people.
Education is more than books in drafty isolation, more than accreditation.
The fact that a liberal arts education is bit of a cultural anomaly weird and out of sync with what the world expects and demands of us is part of the reason I think we came. It is bizarre and wonderful that we have this time, that for four years we can engage the life of the mind, and each others minds. The playwright Tom Stoppard has written Every exit is an entrance somewhere else. That is how I imagine the intellectual experience of leaving Georgetown and the College. What may be truly excruciating about the liberal arts education is that, to be truly effective, this study can t stop at graduation that commencement marks the beginning of staking out a space for the curious mind amid an often hectic world.