What have I not enjoyed about being a student at Templeton? I understand it’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely the place for me. There’s a community of students of all different majors and ideologies that all, in many respects, just get each other. I can go on a 20-minute rant about The Brothers Karamazov and someone else will just understand what I’m talking about. You don’t really get that in a lot of places. It’s an odd place where everything I thought about how I should think about things and ask questions has been dismantled completely, and I’ve learned to like that. It’s amazing.

A lot of places say they have the best faculty. They’re wrong. Templeton has the best faculty. The Honors College teachers have the uncanny ability to be the wisest and most intelligent people I’ve ever met, and yet still feel like your friend. You know how in every college department or high school there’s that one teacher everyone likes because that teacher actually cares AND is good at their job? Yeah, that’s all of our teachers. And I bet ours have better beards.

I want to become a teacher because I had really wonderful teachers, and I want to be that wonderful teacher to other people. Some of my teachers even came from Templeton, and now that I’m here I see why. Templeton not only shapes their students into thinking and wondering individuals, it produces people who are equipped to always serve and learn from the rest of their experiences.

Templeton is showing me the true end of education. Education should not be only about a job or a career or success, it should also be about becoming a better person and learning how to serve. A computer program and an algorithm could teach you how to be successful. An education should fundamentally change who you are and who you want to be. It should allow one new (or old) ways of expressing themselves. 

It was a week and a half away from my parents reading Lord of the Rings…you don’t get much closer to paradise than that! In all seriousness, it was an excuse to take a break from my high school life and be in a beautiful place and jump into beautiful literature. I wish everyone could do it.