371. The purpose of the first two paragraphs is to compare life in college and life outside of college. It's quite interesting because it shows some of the personal benefits of going to college, the unique experiences.2. His thesis statement is stated in the third paragraph when he asks the question: What does it mean to have a college degree? To make it more impactful he could have written it like this: “Having a college degree is a demonstration of my mother's sacrifice and a symbol of what is to come for future generations of my family.3. In paragraph 3 he defends the value of university degrees. He's arguing against people who say they're not as good as they used to be. His rebuttal is that even if they aren't worth as much, they are still worth more than just higher education. Besides appeal to emotion, the only other type of evidence he offers is appeal to logic, but he does so only briefly when talking about the number of Americans who have college degrees. He should have included an appeal to authority or more examples of an appeal to logic, because most of his arguments are based on personal experiences, which only appeal to emotions. Using the other two types his arguments would be less strong