¶ … older soul, I'm so much younger now. It's interesting that by participating in the local academia environment (even in the business realm) some of my fundamental beliefs are challenged, though still not overthrown. Learning to actively engage those around me via the written word, has opened my eyes, ears and mind to the understanding that everyone (including professors and instructors) have their own personal agenda to espouse. Understanding that one thought has helped me understand my own agenda; that is to pass this course (along with all my other courses) receive my degree and enter the workforce as a more rounded (some might even call it jaded) comprehension of how academia and the business world differs. An example of those differences can be found in my earlier writings; words first written to appease the mighty academic machine now sound foolishly arrogant in retrospect. For example; in one of my first attempts at writing for this particular course, I penned the words "sustainability now has expanded to envelop a plethora of disciplines," I now laugh at my feeble attempts at sounding as if I know and understand how the business world really works. My attempts, however, are not as if they were without purpose, instead I believe that I learned not only how to manipulate thoughts and words on the page, I also learned to constructively think through problems associated with different agendas, and to critically analyze...

They were also filled with idealism and socialistic ideas that on the surface sound good when spouting off to ones friends and fellow students, but in retrospect are somewhat simplistic and displaying a lack of real world experience. This is an understandable circumstance, since most of my fellow students are just as inexperienced in the business world as I am, and therefore we all tend to have a rather idealistic viewpoint of how the world should work. Whether it really works that way or not is yet to be discovered (at least by me).
What I did discover was that I could use the written word to set forth my ideals…