Sometimes I am frustrated at how little of my college education I feel like I retained due to the sheer amount of information I had to cram into my brain, but then there’s this:

The saving grace of a liberal arts education is that even if you do not retain book plotlines or historical timelines or names of paintings, you still retain the values and virtues of this kind of education. You retain the ability to think critically, to interact with challenging ideas and difficult debates, to understand the difference between objectivity and subjectivity and the importance of both. You learn how to communicate your ideas and what it means to be a student of life—attentive, open, curious instead of numb, defensive, uninterested.

Being an educated person is about a lot more than being good at Jeopardy or being able to make smart references in your Substack posts; it’s about being formed into a person of integrity, curiosity, and creativity—a person who knows that learning never stops and intelligence is about more than interacting with information.