Connect @ The Learning Commons

“This I Believe” is a weekly series on National Public Radio (NPR) that features essay written listeners. This week’s author is Michael Oatman is a playwright, producer and director living in Cleveland. He has been a newspaper reporter and columnist as well as a child-care worker with at-risk youths. Oatman will receive his Master of Fine Arts degree from Cleveland State University this summer.

Be warned: it’s personal, candid, and is one person’s experience of how education transformed him and he is willing to share it with all of us. Oatman writes: “I am still fighting, but in different ways. I’ve learned the benefit of research and reading, of debate and listening.”

What I like most is that he surprised himself at how he changed and how sees everything differently due to his college education. Education does change us, hopefully we use it to better ourselves and the world around us.

Listen to or read his essay titled Admittance to a Better Life at This I Believe or go to NPR’s main website and look for the header “Essential NPR.”