No human being and no living thing begins her life by undercutting it.No human being, no matter how pampered or abused, no matter how spoiled or mistreated, starts out by giving up or giving in.No one starts life irrevocably defeated.Abandoning the dreams of one’s youth comes only after a protracted process of perversion.The time it takes before this mindset dominates differs for each person.For most it is a gradual accretion of pressures and set-backs and frustrations and small failures, or by the systematic inculcation of mantras that this life doesn’t really matter, that our dreams can’t be fully realized anyway, and that human existence is accidental or meaningless or both — only to find, one day, that their passion, once a glowing force within, is now gone … but where and how?Others, having no depth of thought or will, stop at the first sign of adversity.Only the truly passionate persist. Only the truly passionate retain for a lifetime the vision they had of themselves when they were young. Only a handful maintain for a lifetime the beautiful vision of their youth and go on to give it form.The means by which we give that vision form is our work.No matter what any given person may become, no matter how good, bad, ugly, or great, in the springtime of life, each person at one time believes that her existence is important, and that big wonderful things await.Each and every single human being has the potential to retain that vision, and each and every single human being should retain that vision, because it is the true and correct vision.College, I submit, can do irreversible damage to it.