College and 'how to enjoy life'

What he meant was that college had opened his senses as well as his mind to experiences that would otherwise be foreclosed for him. Not only his capacity to read demanding works of literature and to grasp fundamental political ideas, but also his alertness to color and form, melody and harmony, had been heightened and deepened -- and now, in the late years of his life, he was grateful. Such an education is a hedge against utilitarian values. It has no room for dogma -- only for debate about the meaning, or meanings, of truth. It slakes the human craving for contact with works of art that somehow register one's own longings and yet exceed what one has been able to articulate by and for oneself. As the gentlemen reminded me, it is among the invaluable experiences of the fulfilled life, and surely our colleges have an obligation to coax and prod students toward it. 

-Andrew Delbanco, College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, p. 32. (Recommended by John)