What is the purpose of education? Is it the imparting of knowledge, the learning of how to think beyond what can be seen or heard or the journey to be a useful citizen of the world? I believe that the importance of education transcends beyond these objectives, which are undoubtedly important, but not the ultimate objective of an education. For me, the purpose of an education is to be a ˜T-shaped' individual; one who has the breadth of knowledge and experiences spanning across diverse subjects, including the arts, humanities and sciences (forming the horizontal stroke of the T), yet has chosen a particular subject area to take specialized interest in and actively pursue (forming the vertical stroke of the T).
As aptly put forth by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "the mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions , one acquires breadth and diversity of perspectives through knowledge they have otherwise unheard of. Considered to be "the indispensable condition of expansion of mind and the instrument of attaining to it , knowledge in diverse and almost unrelated areas of knowledge, from a philosophical appreciation of Plato's Republic to a rigorous understanding of differential calculus, is instrumental towards building breadth and opening the mind up to a world of possibilities and excitement. As we think back about how we started learning the phonetics of the English alphabet as a child, followed by grammar rules and sentence structure, then the acquisition of knowledge beyond the English language such as the arithmetic and biology, we can, quite literally, feel the true enlargement of the mind. Hence it is my intention to conscientiously expand my mind through engaging in a diverse range of courses at Stanford, from computer science and engineering which are my primary interests, to courses beyond, such as philosophy, design, sociology, and even physical education and wellbeing (I would be taking a class on the...