This is merely a faulty reproduction of some sentences I heard from a professor this past week, but here they might still hold form enough to lift up those feeling a disenchantment with the post-secondary:
There might be some people, or many people, really, who will smirk and ask you what good your university education is for, what sort of practicality does it provide for you--how is it even slightly applicable to you in reality? What is its point?
That is an entirely ridiculous question to be asking. To you, philosophy [or, insert your specific discipline here] students, what you are learning in university ought not to be looked at as an impracticality--that is the biggest mistake you could ever make. It is providing you with the most practical skills you need. What you are studying is providing you the skills and temperament for how to conduct the most proper method of thought, which is far more important than material techniques. How to think critically and with an open mind must come prior to what you think and do.
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And now that I consider it, this mode of thought which is ideally learned in all post-secondary disciplines, can be similarly learned off campus and outside a library--your school of learning is just wholly focused on it. Though such an unfolding that takes place away from your books should not then devalue those books; coming upon it can occur through a synthesis of school, perhaps, as well as interactions with others, art, nature, all places.
All places may thrive in, and concede to, the mind once you learn of their freedoms.
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