Some of you may remember me, though most probably don't. But that doesn't matter. I'm not the same person now you would have known anyway. Why is that? Because I've learned the true meaning of education. I'll admit, I studied like a mad man in high school and worked up a pretty fat GPA, but that wasn't education. AP History wasn't education. Calculus wasn't education. Those were only a means to the end. What, then, exactly is an education if it is not the drudgery of being stuck in the same city, going to the same classes, seeing the same people every day? An education, my friends, is precisely the opposite of what we are subjected to in high school. Perhaps an analogy (simplified) from Plato would serve to clarify my point. Imagine that you have grown up in a dark cave. At one end, a fire burns, but no outside light enters. Thus, you have never seen any real people or real objects, only their shadows. This is, as far as you know, the real world. One day, someone comes into the cave and drags you outside into the light of day. The bright sun burns your eyes and you want to run back into the cave, but the person holds you. Soon your eyes begin to adjust and you start to see the real world, full of color and detail. But then the person wants to drag you back into the cave. After having seen what the world has to offer, would you want to go back to that place of dark and shadows? Of course not. As you have probably guessed, the cave is high school. But what is this bright, colored world? Where can it be found? Outside of Stockton, away from everyday routine is where this world of discovery resides. For me, it was the beast called college that dragged me out of my cave and opened to me possibilities never before conceived. So what is to be found in this light world? What is so different about the education found in the light world from that cave? What is a true education? It is not only that I am now fascinated with learning and enjoy going to classes (case in point: use of the Plato analogy). That is the least of the issue. True education is experiencing the world for all its worth. It is going to new places, seeing new things, meeting new people. Thanks to college, I've done all of these things. I've ice-climbed, rock-climbed, mountaineered and kayak-surfed. I've canyoneered, lounged in hot springs, learned to skank and been from here to Utah and about everywhere in between. I've road-tripped to Mexico, made more friends and better friends than I've ever had, done more in three years than I did in my first 18 and nearly died a few more times than I would like to count. In short, I've lived. For the first time, I've lived. I'm not saying high school is worthless. Dues must be paid and work ethic learned before one can hope to succeed in college, or in the real world for that matter. I am only saying that there are infinitely more possibilities than can even be fathomed while in high school. (Though while I was there, I did get one good taste of what I would later realize was a true education, that being journalism. Thanks Mrs. Duffel and compadres. I still have the greatest memories of those years.) Sadly, through failing to learn the basics that high school has to offer, some will never escape the cave, never find the real meaning of education. Trust me, the extra work is worth it. Though you cannot now grasp what the light world is like, it has made me the happiest person in the world. Believe that.