“What do you like the most about college?”
Every college student who has faced this question from siblings, relatives, and friends from home may have frozen up momentarily, wondering what to say (or whether there’s anything to say at all). There are a plethora of answers: the independence from home, the people they’ve met, the professionals they’ve been able to network with. But over the past year, I’ve developed a new insight: the value of college is to expand your worldview and complicate your implicit assumptions.
A simple example is from my Introduction to Political Science class. We were learning about disinformation in the news, and we discussed how people without a college education might be more easily swayed by false facts. It seemed obvious to me what news was real and what was fake, and that if I were ever uncertain, I should do my own research. The necessity of verifying source credibility has been impressed on me through many years of English- and research-based classes. Then I realized that not everyone has the opportunity to be in a college class and develop media literacy. Even by taking this class, I was already gaining a greater perspective on the world as a person with access to the locked-up world of academics. Recognizing that, it seems unfair to judge people without a college education for reading the sources they do or voting differently from college-educated people.
In some ways, it’s elitist to assume that all people can gain the same information even with the advent of the internet. Another example is the idea of sustainability. Many environmental activists state that it’s better for the planet to eat sustainably-sourced foods or buy sustainable fashion brands. However, these environmentally healthy items may also cost more in comparison to cheaper alternatives. Thus, environmentalism intersects with socioeconomic class. That’s not to say people should give up on being sustainable altogether, but we have to understand the obstacles that some people may face. It is much easier for people with some degree of economic capital to take part in social movements. But, adding yet another layer, this belief may deny agency to people of a lower socioeconomic class. They do still speak up and participate in movements they care about, contributing in spite of and sometimes because of their situation (as people who can relate to systemic institutional oppression).
All these different perspectives contribute to my belief that every topic has its nuances. No issue is black and white; every strong claim has caveats and complications that must be accounted for. The value of my college classes is that they do not perpetuate one singular perspective. My professors present evidence for several different ideologies, allowing us to decide for ourselves which one we agree with most. When I was younger, if an authority figure had told me “social media is good” and another one said that “social media is bad,” I would have felt conflicted over who to believe. But in a Sociology class on virtual communities, I learned that social media can be presented as both good or bad depending on who is doing the research.
Although we are taught that science should be objective, there is no way for a researcher to be objective due to their multiplicity of life experiences. Based on where they grew up or what they’ve observed, they will have sharply different views about social media. This will affect their analysis of evidence; in fact, there are studies where two different researchers see the same evidence yet come to different conclusions. In class, our professor would always indicate whether the researcher or scholar leaned more pro-social media or anti-social media. We were told to be cognizant of this when reading and also to be aware of our own internal biases. Recognizing how our experiences color our opinions can, paradoxically, make us a little more objective. Most people tend to dislike essays and finals, and I agree that studying and writing are tedious. However, I’ve found that they help me understand all the competing ideologies in order to form an opinion. We are not required to be objective; with our own lived experiences, we can come to our own conclusions about how to see life. Interestingly enough, through the process of learning that there isn’t one way to view the world, I’ve learned to validate my own worldviews.