I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the liberal arts education I received at a small residential college. Nowhere else could I have received the individual attention from faculty or have participated in the active discussions that challenged me to think deeply and critically while engaging with course material.
In law school, I use those skills every day, analyzing texts and applying complicated principles to real life situations. Unlike many of my fellow students, I am not afraid of or baffled by a Socratic lecture style, or the need to look at a problem from a wide range of perspectives. It is what I have been doing since I was a freshman in college.
I think a lot of people believe that going to a small college means forgoing extracurricular opportunities, but that is simply not the case. In fact, a major part of what made my education so broadly based was the vast array of volunteer, extra-curricular, and co-curricular activities that I was encouraged to participate in. These activities exposed me to ideas I hadn’t yet seen and helped me to find my own voice and to express it clearly.
My undergraduate experience transformed my viewpoint over and over again; the skills and life-long passion for learning that I gained during that time continue to do so today. When I chose a law school, I chose one that I believed would come the closest to matching the spirit of a liberal arts education, because that spirit has truly become a part of who I am.
A liberal arts education is transformative, and it is powerful in a way that attending lectures filled with hundreds of students simply cannot be. That is why attending a liberal arts college is the best decision I ever made.
Ben Reese graduated as the valedictorian of the Marietta College Class of 2013, earning bachelor’s degrees in both economics and political science. While at Marietta, Reese was an active member of the speech and debate team, moot court program, wind ensemble, and symphonic band. A member of both the leadership and honors programs at Marietta, he was also inducted into several academic honor societies, including: Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa (leadership), Pi Kappa Delta (forensics), Pi Sigma Alpha (political science), and Omicron Delta Epsilon (economics). Over the summer of 2014, Reese worked as a law clerk at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and in the fall of 2014, he begins his second year at the University of Michigan Law School, where he is associate editor of the Michigan Law Review.