Why do we go to school?

To get a good job, as Lewis Black would have you believe.

The answer to this question obviously varies from person to person, because we all have different goals and aspirations in life. Predictably, and rather lazily I will explain my thoughts and reasons, which is another way of saying why one would pursue an educatoin.

Some enjoy going to school, some despise it, and some others have no choice because they're being pressured into straight A's by their snooty parents and anything but would result in a catastrophic family crisis. I personally enjoy school, parts of it anyway. Throughout this blog I will be explaining every nook and cranny of my thoughts about school via my own experience in school and draw from research of others.

Now, a personal story, written by me, about me, for you to read. I am new to Kennedy (as some of you know already). I moved here literally just before school started. The whole reason I'm here at Kennedy is purely for a superior education. My family still lives where they have for the past ten years, on a small farm outside Clermont, Iowa. I used to go to North Fayette High School in West Union, Iowa. You've probably never heard of either of those places, but West Union is about an hour and a half north of here. When I was seven years old my family and I moved from Independence, where I was born, to the farm I just recently moved from. I started second grade in West Union, and went through North Fayette Schools until the end of my sophomore year.  During my sophomore year I basically told my parents that North Fayette wasn't any place for me anymore and I wanted to go to Kennedy. Neither of them were shocked to hear this; I mean to say yes they were a bit surprised to hear that my school of choice was Kennedy, but they were not surprised at my growing resentment of North Fayette. And their reaction honestly was a shock to me. I thought I would have to beg and plead and coerce and persuade to get this to happen but it was a breeze. To make a long story shorter my mother rented an apartment here in Cedar Rapids and she stays with me three nights a week. Here I am, essentially on my own, in a town that is mostly unknown to me, planning to attend a high school in which I know no one but one person (Wiatt Cariveau is his name, if anyone cares to know. I actually talked with him about Kennedy, so I guess you could say he recruited me in a sense). What does this story mean? To you personally it could mean next to nothing, which is fine. To this blog it is giving a very deep personal connection to my first topic: education. I have been and still often find myself hugely angry with a lot of things educators do today. The previous sentence says everything as to why exactly I left my old school, my old friends, my old teachers to come here; I was pissed off at North Fayette for their lack of excellence in education. If that doesn't create the synapse in your head that says, "This kid really cares about his education" I don't have another method to illustrate that.

While you're reading this I don't intend for you to feel like I'm attacking you with my words. Yes, my words may seem poignant at times, maybe even cynical. I'd like to make clear that my attitude towards education is optimistic. I would like to think the best about going school, my teachers, and my classmates. I would like to enjoy learning new things and exploring previously uncharted expanses of the academic cosmos. If I didn't care about those things I would've stayed where I was, going through the same motions, experiencing the same mediocre education that is North Fayette. If I were to list the ways that Kennedy far exceeds North Fayette I'd have a list out the door. I actually did write down pros and cons once and I had a page and a half of pros before I could think of ten cons.

This is the stuff I care about. And though Lewis Black has a good point, there are many, many more arguments that lie at the crux of the question, "Why do we go to school?"