Liberal Arts Education

Liberal Arts educations I believe develop a person as a whole vs. cultivating them for a paticular course of study that you would find in a technical or vocational school. They care just as much about the individual outside the classroom as they do the student.
Right now, I have two senior capstone courses. Both have called upon me to recall what I have learned here at Loras College and how it has shaped me both as an individual and a student of the college.The list that we created as a class included critical thinking, original thought, analytical skills, and devoloping ourselves ethically (it included a whole lot of other stuff, but these were what I found relevant for this post). I think that all these characteristcis are important when looking at the service project that we now face.
For one, we can look at a situation and understand how to accomplish the goal that we set for ourselves. In our respective areas of volunteering when will inevitably face situations that will require us to think outside the box in order to achieve what we set out to do. This applies to the world outside of school or service as well. We are able to call upon knowledge from different areas and learn how to incorporate that in order to come up with a solution, whereas students of a vocational or trade school are limited in their knowledge of certain things.
As students of this liberal arts college in paticular, we are held to a higher standard (in my biased opinion) of learning how our actions affect others, and our responsiblity to society. The very dispositions of our college call us to become ethical decision makers and responsible contributers-- the dispositions themselves are self explanatory of the importance to service.
Naussbaum challenges us to question what is not right and do something to change that. I feel that is something we should practice throughout our lives