During these four eventful years of undergraduate studies, there is a particular question that should be asked and answered honestly by every student: What is the best way that I can spend my time? There isn’t necessarily a correct answer, but there are implications to papering this question over and pushing it aside without proper reflection.
Erik Erikson, a well-known developmental psychologist, considers the later teenage years to be those where a prominent existential question tends to surface for the individual: “Who am I and what can I be?” It is somewhat easy to spot those who have neither come to any meaningful conclusions about themselves nor asked and contemplated other fundamental questions, as they tend to be the most fearful of life after college.
A good friend of mine, while looking for a suitable city and neighborhood to live in following graduation, decided that he wanted a location with a young crowd. Recent college grads, to be specific, so that it would be “like a continuation of college.” This idea is bothersome. Why would one want to remain in perpetual adolescence? It seems like a stifling mindset; one has just barely crawled out of the nest to first depart to college only to fly to another more communal nest. It is a mindset that fears leaving that safe and familiar setting.
But it is understandable why so many fear life after college. Students joke about this fear, but it is real, and much more substantial than most are willing to admit. Even for students who have a relatively strong grasp on their career prospects succumb to this fear, and many students repress these worries until they are finally staring down the barrel of graduation or senior year. Whatever drenches you in the cold water of reality first.
Students who are intent on transforming a large block of their college time into a blurred stupor composed of fleeting memories and riddled with time lapses seem to be among those hardest hit with post-college fears. When college is treated like a moral-free zone void of responsibility and rationalized by YOLO and other mantras to justify indulgence and ease personal guilt or integrity dilemmas, it is met with the painfully sharp contrast of the real world.
This behavior certainly is not aided by the media’s depiction of higher education. It is often illustrated as a haven of promiscuity, indulgence and rather flimsy, at times nonexistent, moral boundaries. Almost like nirvana, where rivers run the murky brown of Keystone and sexual standards are minimal.
This is fun and all, but it sets the stage for how many define their requirements for having a fulfilling college experience. In defining and living by these requirements, many may fail to address the much more pertinent and impactful life questions that will build the foundation of the individual.
Students tend to worry about not raging too hard, and that they will come to regret a modest college experience as if they will have missed out on a crucial component of their young lives. There may be some truth to this worry, but it seems that a greater potential for regret would stem from an individual failing to dedicate the proper time to discovering himself or herself in a deeper and more profound way.
Imagine being thrust into the modern economy, with all of its expectations and distractions, and having just begun to truly assess what is needed for happiness and the various other questions that are now more difficult to tend to among the noise and responsibility of adulthood.
Live it up while you’re young and utilize the youthful energy that will inevitably falter with age, but do not use all of that energy for indulgence and valueless activities. Students should place great(er) importance on self-development, intellectual exploration and the creation of meaningful relationships and bonds. These are all elements that form the individual and strengthen one’s grasp of the principles by which one decides to live and grow.