Sometime in August 2020, an American University freshman named Kayla Kelly was searching through a course registration catalog to find a class that could be potentially intriguing. Then, it'd popped up on her screen, "What It Means to Be Educated," a class that met once a week on Wednesdays. With quickness, she added the course to her schedule, she was ready. 

To Kayla, education was a door awaiting to be unlocked to reveal various new worlds, a way to escape her current situation. Once acquired, education can be an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. Her perspective of education was rooted in a necessity to be able to give back to her respective community and to be an educated individual, they must be able to translate their talents and knowledge in different ways to be more accessible. To her, it was more than being highly proficient in one subject, but being able to make use of that knowledge inways that are transformative.

The first week of class, she learned that her mind was being coddled. An article discussed in class introduced a term called “vindictive protectiveness”, where folks have to think twice before speaking or expressing themselves.

Gen Z had created, what we call, “cancel culture”, when we immediately shut down ideas that don’t favor ours or demonize someone for a humanly mistake. We tend to castrophize these events, making the general population forced to adopt a certain mindset to avoid being called out and having their reputation ruined, which is extremely toxic.

Reviewing that article and examining the multiple intelligences, it made her wonder about the process of being "properly" educated. An educated person is one who has gained the power of reflective attention, the power to hold problems, and questions before the mind. Though, it leads her to question: Who gets to decide what it means to be well educated? How do we know if education is successful and what it's supposed to be successful at if each person holds different capabilities?

Kayla looked outside of her bubble and into the perspectives that her classmates had offered through the class blog. From experiences of gender roles in education to having faith being in an integral part in the learning process, one theme remained within these stories: the act of taking on educational opportunities that broadened their views and vision.

Through class discussions and debates about topics like affirmation action, the definition of an educated person definitely shifted for Kayla. The response that her peers had made concerning these concepts had transformed her definition of being "educated" to be beyond attaining a standard Bachelor's degree. Heck, even her mother agrees.

She passionately describes the characteristics of an educated person as one for a thirst for knowledge and the willingness to grow. In their discussion, they stated that whether or not an individual has a college degree, there must be something in their life that drives their focus, whether it’s being the regional manager for Burger King or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  

They expressed that there is a number of people who are book smart and have all of certifications but labelling them as “educated” can be a gray area because their level of understanding stays within the restraints on what their degree focuses on. To be a true scholar in your field, you need to provide more substance than what your job requires or what your everyday life requires. As her mother beautifully put it, “One needs to have more depth, more awareness, of the world that they live in.”

Education is beyond what Kayla views upon it, as her intersectional experiences had shaped that definition. For some, it's a chance to liberate themselves and to finally provide for their families.

For others, it's acquiring the skills to be become contributing adults in society while fighting inequities due to their racial and socioeconomic status.