A wise man once told me, "Never tell anyone your dreams because if you never see them in your waking life, you won't have to explain for the rest of your existence why you never made it."  Sublime advice, right?  Similarly, a good buddy once shared with me a link to C.P. Cavafy's poem Ithaka.  The journey to my dream is as valuable as the destination itself because that is where I will find true enrichment.

So, I have decided to break protocol.  I want to share one of the reasons I am driven to sit at a keyboard and pound out stories and such.  Of course I want what any writer wants, to be able to provide a living for my family by becoming a storyteller, but for me, there is more.  I want to start a school.

Education is this world's great equalizer.  Enlightenment is simply impossible without it.  Until enough of our leaders learn how to respect, cooperate, and love, our world will be full of hate, violence, and greed.

The Scholarships

The ideal would be for my University to operate free of charge to the students, including tuition, room and board, cost of living, and travel expenses.  All students are valued the same and treated with equal opportunity.  In my current vision, the University's student body would be filled via two methods.

Noah's Ark:  Every country in the world would be invited to send two students, one male and one female, per academic year to the University.  Two-by-two.  Each country would decide on its own framework for deciding who to send.  I know some would fear corruption, but I have faith that this system would work out for good over the course of time.  According to Wikipedia, the United Nations current recognizes 206 sovereign states.  So, that would be 412 students per academic year under this scholarship.

Pro Rata: There are seven billion people in the world with India and China leading the way with over a billion each.  It seems fair to me to offer a second scholarship to students based on the population of his/her home nation.  So, if my University could offer 1000 scholarships each academic year under this provision, a country with one billion people would provide approximately 143 students.  A country like the United States, with approximately 400 million people, would send 57 students each academic year.  Some sort of pooling process would have to be developed in order to accommodate countries with very large populations where the mathematics would not guarantee a student from their nation could attend every year under this provision.  Furthermore, students could apply directly for this scholarship and if they meet the basic academic criteria, they would either be chosen by an acceptance committee or at random (or a combination of both).