The Measure of an Education

You know, I have been tossing and turning all night over a conversation I had with my sister today. My sister a Cornell University graduate preceeded to advise me on the many factors that can give one of my fellow collegiates an advantage over me. 

She said that most of these kids had come from an schools with far more course variety and scenic campuses that promoted learning. Thier parents money--in public school, tax dollars--had secured a superior education for them. Cardinal Spellman couldn't even be seen on the same playing level with the public schools these kids attended in white suberbia.

In essence, by the time these kids had reached college they had already been through some of the classes I was just taking for the first time. Here I was thinking I was incompent while, all along these kids had an unfair advantage over me. Perhaps this is why affirmative action is just and not a scheme devised for African Americans and minorities alike to get ahead. We are striving for equal education not a free ride.

But one thing she said pissed me off. She said that my classes at Quinnipiac were probably not as intense as hers since hey, she did attend Cornell University an "Ivy League". But today my brothers and sisters, I come before you and tell you that we have been bamboozled, fed lies our entire lives about what determines the quality of an education.

In the few months i've been at Quinnipiac, i've learned more than I have in my entire life. I have learned to trust myself, to indulge in independent thoughts and not allow society to determine for me what education is. Education is perpetual, you learn everywhere you go and Quinnipiac is just a footstool to my future.

I said the days ahead of me will be blessed and the Lord sent me here to train a soldier. A solidier raised in the Bronx, NY placed in the midst of 7,000 white people to train my spirit. It is up to me to take the methods of critical inquiry I have developed and always ask questions.

But, I urge you to never let anyone tell you that you are inferior.  You are a child of God born to manifest in his glory. Education is simply what you make of it.