College tuition is more than just a payment for your classes. It’s an investment in your academic skills, social skills and everything in between. There is largely no debate in opposition that the courses we take while away at college are of utter importance and need to be prioritized over everything else. But it is also necessary to look upon other important factors in our lives that when given time and attention, greatly contribute to our well being and the greater good of society as a whole.
The point being made here is that productive activities conducted outside of the classroom could be argued as being almost, or just as supportive of a successful future when compared to a Penn State class. In some cases, extracurricular activities are more conducive in creating a society-like setting by preparing the students involved for the real world by creating a setting alike ones found outside college campuses.
The social world of interaction is largely represented by extracurricular activities where students are interacting with other students to achieve a goal. The goal of the club/org./etc. is not particularly important in the long run, rather the way of working within the system of the organization to achieve what is needed is largely what is taken away by participants and proves to be much more useful in the future. A club or organization teaches you the way humans interact with each other to achieve the goal in the most efficient way possible. What is taken away by students isn’t normally directly from the exact goal of the club. It is the experience of working with other students to achieve the goal.
When looking at this the right way, it can be seen that everything we do relies solely on improving the basic interaction between a population of people. From this base of interaction, we add to it from what we learn from our classes here at Penn State. But without forming and adapting to the structure of social society, we would never be able to apply what we learn in our classes to the greater good of the human race.
A large part of participating in social and extracurricular events is to appreciate and feel appreciated by the people around us. Without this drive for connection, you could say there wouldn’t be a structure of education at all. We are here at college to improve ourselves and society. Understanding why we are all gathered here at an academic institution is important not only to realize but also to apply to daily life.
Bringing this back to the point, our tuition should not be thought of as only going towards our classes. Our tuition is our investment within ourselves to improve us and the society around us. To get to this goal, we have to figure out what factors in our college experience will contribute the most to get us in this position. For many students, classes alone are not enough to evolve us into the people we want to be. This is why we allocate certain amounts of time outside of classes to invest in the betterment of ourselves.