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What Are You Doing Here By Dr. Edmundson Summary

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What Are You Doing Here By Dr. Edmundson Summary
Arthur Tuggle III
Professor Sepesy
English 101
22 February 2017
Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here
This essay provides an alternative view point to commonly held belief: that one must go to college solely to receive a diploma and find a good job. The viewpoint that this essay expresses is that rather than using “university education” for “a means to an end” (172) with the “end” being a good job, students should instead focus on receiving a meaningful education that will help them define themselves and later allow them to receive a fulfilling job. Dr. Edmundson, the author of this piece, is currently employed by the University of Virginia as an English professor.
Dr. Edmundson targets this essay towards incoming college freshman, hence the essay tends to be of relation to a younger audience. The author writes this essay to advocate that one should live a life of self-fulfillment, a life of following one own’s passion, even if it may not be the highest paying or the easiest to accomplish. Starting off with a personal anecdote of a conversation between the author and his father, Edmundson describes a period in his life in which he was going to “go along” (178) with the usual college perspective, but then changed his mind with the guidance of his father. In the …show more content…
Furiously frowning at this decision, Edmundson’s father tells the author that he should not study something he doesn’t like, but rather he should follow his
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