There are some decisions that will change your life. There are some decisions that will not only just change your life but also change who you become. As melodramatic as it sounds, getting a college degree will do both. Okay, some of you may not be on board with my line of thinking yet, so let me elaborate by breaking this down into sections and argue my point of view.

My beliefs are:

1.) Going to college will change your life. Of course there are very few people who would disagree with this, but for those who do I offer the following.

a.) Going to college will help you gain knowledge which you will always have with you, regardless of your surrounding circumstances. Don’t believe me? There was a Nazi concentration camp Jewish prisoner named Viktor Frankl. He wrote the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” (a must read by the way). He explained that the Nazi’s could take everything from him, including his very name, but they could not control his mind and thus his ability to learn a reason for living through discovery of new knowledge and applications of old knowledge. Of course the book is much deeper than that, but Viktor maintained what he learned and even in the most depraved of circumstances, it never left him.

b.) Going to college will increase your earning potential. As to why this is can vary. Everything from qualifying for a better paying job to simply learning skills that make you more valuable can be argued.

c.) Going to college will increase your children’s potential to go to college and thus increase their chances of overall financial success. Kids with parents who went to college to go college more often than kids who have parents who didn’t. Go figure.

d.) Going to college will teach you research methods, argumentation (sometimes) and show you how to seek and find matters of fact and string these into your own thoughts.

That’s four good reasons but there are more if you think about it for a moment.

2.) Going to college will change who you become. This one is a tougher concept to argue, but bear with me.

a.) Going to college will challenge you mentally, cause you to think critically and expose you to new things, like it or not. You will change your beliefs, discover new ideals, be exposed to things you agree with, disagree with and have never considered before. You will become a better-rounded person and possibly even come up with reasons for your very own beliefs. This will separate you from the crowd. Don’t believe me? Then consider this, why is lying wrong? Think about it long and hard, consider all variations of the answer you may give, suppose that the question may even be too narrow, and really get into it. Now walk down the hallway and ask the first person you see why they think lying is wrong. That simple question will lead to stammering, a possible upheaval of beliefs/moral judgements/regurgitated thoughts, but it will not lead to a well thought out explanation. Simply being told lying is wrong is good enough for most folks, but not for you, graduate.

b.) Going to college will teach you to think critically. Like perhaps you did above. You will become more suspicious of sources for facts, be able to see through smoke and mirrors (often but not always) and learn how to perform research when necessary. This really annoys liars by the way.

c.) Going to college will give you a sense of accomplishment and pride that nobody can take from you. No doubt about it, the higher you go in your education the more seriously people begin to take you in professional and even at times personal relationships. Perhaps because you learn to communicate better, perhaps because of your credentials, perhaps because of your confidence, perhaps because of a number of things combined.

d.) Going to college will force you to become a knowledge seeker. You will begin to question things. Perhaps not even to where you notice at first, but learning becomes addicting, all of a sudden a quiet Saturday afternoon after you are finished with college feels, well, empty. Kind of like you should be doing something, learning, challenging yourself somehow. That is your mind craving stimulation. This may not be universal (though I believe it is), I know graduates who swear this isn’t them, but then they get into a hobby and can tell you to the most minute detail everything about certain aspects of that hobby that they have researched to no end. Often far more than some of their hobbyist peers. It’s that addiction to mental stimulation. I believe all humans have it to one degree or another, but those who have been taught how to focus it into efficient learning just seem to consume more knowledge than those who take a less sophisticated scattershot approach do.

So are you on the fence? It’s a new year. You want change in your life? Start at home, start with yourself.