Article August 31, 1987 Issue

Pursuing your education?

Is there something more to our individuality than being "packaged for success"?

Margaret H. Sullivan

Education can sometimes seem like a people-factory. You pass through a specific set of circumstances that mold and shape you. You "become" something as a result of accumulated experience and knowledge. In the process you may feel that you've become a product—a package that can be marketed. Do you consider yourself incomplete until you've finished a twelve-to sixteen-year development phase (your education)? Has the product (you!) been pilot-tested in summer jobs?

With all the competition in the market, it apparently isn't enough merely to be an acceptable package. One must be honed to excellence by the "right" choices all along the way: the right school, the right activities, clothes, food, companions. This emphasis can be devastating to people who feel they have no hope of ever achieving this standard; vaguely disconcerting to one who wonders if it's worth the effort; and frequently frustrating and dissatisfying even to those who pursue it wholeheartedly.

Occasionally, we get a flash of the deeper dimension to our existence—coming out of the library at midnight to the sheer immensity of a star-filled sky, finding words to comfort a friend who has been treated unjustly, unexpectedly sharing insights with a professor you thought was intimidating. Something fresh breaks into the ordinary routine and gives us the beginnings of a totally new perspective. This breakthrough can be evidence of the activity of God in human consciousness. As we begin to pay more attention to it, we perceive identity in a way that may be totally new to us. The personality that seemed so solidly a mass of material elements gives way to an identity determined by spiritual qualities.

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