The end of the spring semester is rapidly approaching. Hold on tight for just a few more weeks, and then finals will be over and summer will be here.

For many of you, my dear readers, this is it — the last semester of school ever. You’ve completed all the requirements, passed all the tests and are moving on to the next phase of your life. So instead of asking the common question of “What will you take away from this class?” I want to focus on “What will you take away from this education?” You’ve been in college likely for four years, maybe more, maybe less. So what has it got you?

There’s the diploma, of course, and the skills that come with it. The importance of that should not be ignored. Even with problems of unemployment, underemployment and student debt in today’s economy, there are plenty of benefits to having a degree.

But I hope — oh, do I hope — that you will take away far more than that. Many say that your college years are the best years of your life. I think that’s silly, but college is a unique experience, not quite like what came before, and not quite like what will ever happen again. And I hope you took advantage of all the opportunities that uniqueness offers.

I hope you stepped outside your comfort zone. OK, that’s a lie: I hope you were given a swift kick in the rump and sent off into the big crazy world we live in. We too often fall into the trap of believing that everyone is like ourselves, or that anyone who is the slightest bit different must be completely alien and incomprehensible. Any college campus the size of the University of Illinois brings in vastly diverse backgrounds in socioeconomic status, country of origin, customs, culture, thoughts and opinions. It forces us to confront the wide diversity of humanity every day.

I hope that you made friends and work to keep them. Not only does college bring together people from across the world, it flings them back out to all corners of it once it’s over. It takes effort to hold on to the connections you made in college, but it’s worth it to do so.

I hope that you found a passion. A degree only certifies our capability, but our work can be so much sweeter if we bring drive, energy and verve to it every day. There is more to growing up than gaining more responsibilities (and having fewer hairs on our heads); it is also about discovering who we are, what we care about, and — yes — what we will fight for, too. There is no need for your passion to come from high-minded ideals, like peace and justice: It can be as simple as a book so powerful, you want to reread it again and again. It is possible to go through college without ever finding your passion. Possible, but not recommended. Take that crazy course that doesn’t immediately benefit your degree just because you want to learn about the weather on Mars or what life was like in Ancient Rome or whatever your heart desires.

At the same time, I hope you stayed a kid at heart. We all have those silly dreams that persist into our college years (I have always wanted to be better at juggling myself), and college is a great time to make some of those dreams come true. Whatever they may be, there’s bound to be a like-minded club of people who want to help.

I hope you were exposed to different ways of thinking: a scientific paper, a Supreme Court trial, a classic novel, a screening of a silent movie, and the most avant-garde art gallery available. Even if we are not scientists or lawyers ourselves, understanding the delicate attention to detail required in these subjects is an important aspect of being a citizen in today’s world; and for art, we should all be exposed to a little bit of everything. It may take some searching to find that perfect work of art that speaks directly to us.

I hope you learned to question your deepest beliefs and to defend them just as fiercely. We’ve all had to write the five-paragraph essay to argue for a thesis idea, all ostensibly to improve our communication and rhetorical abilities. But we learn so much about ourselves by turning that inward, to our own sacred beliefs. Even better, take something we don’t believe in and argue for it as passionately as we would our own views; it humanizes those we disagree with, instead of the constant demonizing of today’s politics.

But most of all, I hope you found the confidence to say, “I don’t know.” There is a point we reach in our education, where we see that for all we have discovered about the universe, there is far, far more that is not known. 

It takes a great humility to admit that our knowledge isn’t perfect.

And it’s that incompleteness which inspires us to keep learning — to keep exploring — well after our time in college is over.

Joseph is a graduate student in mathematics. He can be reached at [email protected].