The greatest advantage I gained from having a college education has always been my awareness of my choices in life. To not know about the world is to exponentially reduce the number of things you think are possible, let alone easy once you learn them.
No matter what a person’s specialty becomes, if they stayed awake and engaged in the college experience, there are simply a whole lot more things they now know about than those who couldn't or simply didn’t make the journey.
They know a lot more of the “why’s” of the world. They are a lot harder to fool about a whole lot of critical topics.
Science doesn’t scare them into voluntary ignorance, for one thing. Biology has a logic that is understandable even when new discoveries are mentioned. History and the social behavior of people become familiar realities, rather than mere legends and superstition. Geography is recognized as being a component of all of these topics, as cause or effect.
Those are some of the many things learned along the way, in explanation of the particular education being sought. Add to that the constant exercise in communicating your thoughts and ideas clearly and convincingly, and you have benefits that others simply haven’t enough time left to discover in a natural fashion. You become a person people go to for “realities”, not another shrugging shoulders and admitting “I dunno either!”
Because of that, you will always be aware of more choices, more ways to succeed and to avoid disaster, than those unfortunate enough to not own the gifts that you pursued…
