The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

For the past couple months, I have been contemplating what it means to pursue an education. Is it simply the required schooling until you are 18 and then four more years to pursue a bachelor's degree? Or is there something else I am missing? I have tried to grasp what a true education should look like. I can safely say that I am further along in my pursuit, and yet at the same time, nowhere near completion. I have read books outside of a required syllabi, blog posts on history, and shared numerous lunch conversations with faculty and students, actions which have led me to realize something. For me, education is not just a means to a job. It is a lifestyle of constantly seeking improvement. My pursuit of education is to better myself and to prepare myself to be a citizen of the world around me. I have had the privilege of reading a book recently by Dr. Jon Fea Ph.D. (Check out his blog here!) who is a professor of American History over at Messiah college in Pennsylvania. His book, "The Way of Improvement Leads Home", details the life of Philip Vickers Fithian, a New Jersey man who is on his own quest for improvement. The challenges that Fithian must go through in order to achieve his education have illuminated my own path and inspired me to press on. Fithian does not stop after his formal education is over. He corresponds with others, he debates, he continues to read and record his thoughts on what he has read. Fithian represents something that is lost today. Philip Vickers Fithian is a man who pursued improvement for improvements sake. This pursuit and understanding is something I have been struggling with for about a year. My struggle for improvement, is the reason this blog exists. I hope any readers of this blog, will continue to follow me on my journey and maybe, just maybe, they will decide that it's a journey that they would like to be a part of themselves.