|
|
Valuable Lessons From My Second Second Consecutive Semester of College| | I sometimes sleep in and don't go to class, but it's never for a cool, hip, edgy reason like a hangover; for me, it's more likely that I'm watching old episodes of Scrubs or researching Lutheran theology. I try to get my homework done, but sometimes I don't want to read George Herbert's poetry, and even when I do, sometimes I don't have much to write about it. It's hard for me to gin up interest in things, to motivate myself to get things done when there are other things I'd rather do. And I guess that in a way, college has been working for me even when I haven't been working for it.
I've always been different, sometimes by choice and sometimes not. I honestly haven't had a lot of experiences during which I felt like I was a part of something, at least not one similar to the other parts. When I'm with my family, I get that feeling, like I'm the same as the people I'm with. Sometimes it happens in a group of friends, but that's rare and fleeting. I'm almost always aware of myself as something else, always something separate from my surroundings. This is not a complaint, but merely an observation. Truly, I have no problem with being myself. I started my college career at a school where I knew one person, and she and I hadn't even really talked in a while. I wasn't really like anyone that I met there, and I was always very aware of myself as a singular identity. After not really fitting there, I left for home, and for the first time, I didn't really fit there either, because I knew it wasn't where I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be off at school, preparing myself for the real world. So I went to college again, at a school where I knew people, and as far as background was concerned, there were a lot of people like me. But I knew I wasn't them; I wasn't one of them, and none of them were like me. "Yeah, I think I'm a junior, but I'm a transfer, so this is my first year here." I suppose it's a little surprising that this wasn't difficult for me. I guess I was proud, like I have learned to be for most of my life, to be different from the people around me.
The challenge, then, wasn't fitting in. It wasn't living in a house with guys I had just met. It wasn't even the schoolwork, though the load wasn't light. That stuff was easy to deal with. The challenge I've had this year, and especially this semester, was myself. I learned, as I mentioned earlier, that I'm not a good self-motivator. I suppose I knew this, as did some of my friends and high school teachers, but I've begun to realize that it's more of an obstacle than I'd reckoned. A lot of life, as it seems to me now, requires you to set goals for yourself, to be accountable to no one but yourself, and if you can't motivate yourself, there is often no one else to do it for you. A lot of Responsibility, that big, capital, scary word that parents and guidance counselors use to frighten you to make your bed, do your homework, fill out your college applications, and declare your major, depends on taking charge of yourself when there's no one else to tell you what to do.
This semester's almost over, and I still have a lot of work to do: papers to write, tests to study for, summer rent checks to postdate and hand over. I've learned a lesson, though, I guess you could say about learning itself. People go to school for a lot of reasons. Some go to college because that's what you do after high school, some because they want to learn all about something that interests them, and some because they need a degree to land a job and make money. These reasons all provide motivation, and the second two are really noble and worthy reasons. But a major reason to go to college, that some, but not all, students recognize, is to prepare for life. More important than learning about English literature, or music theory, or engineering, is learning about yourself: your strengths, weaknesses, passions, revulsions, etc. To be a complete, functioning person, I think you really have to get a handle on yourself as an individual. After you're a member of a team or a club, or a resident on a floor, or a brother in a fraternity, or a student at an institution, after all that, when you graduate, you're just you. Nobody else is like you, nobody else can tell you how to be you. If you haven't figured out in those four or five or fifteen years since graduating high school how to be yourself, then you're going to be lost. Once you're out there, in the Real World, wherever that is, it won't matter as much if you got A's or C's, or if you can recite Virgil in Latin, or if you were the treasurer of a club, or if you dropped a class and had to take it the next semester, as it will matter if you learned about yourself.
The most important thing you can do is to be yourself. It's a cliche by now, but I think cliches exist for a good reason, and that is that truth is always truth, and people don't get tired of speaking it, even if they get tired of the phrases it's spoken in. It sounds funny to say that you have to learn how to be you, but I think it's really true. I have to get some sleep, so I can get up tomorrow and go to class, read some literature, and write some papers, but I wanted to share this because I think it's really important. Wherever you are in life, I think you can stand to understand more about yourself. Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living, and I think that ultimately, it's not a very rewarding life to live. It might be easy for a while, but I don't think it can stay easy. For me, college is a struggle, and it's a fight that's worth fighting, because I'm learning about myself, and I'm taking what I'm learning and I'm trying to apply it. I hope that somebody reads this, and I hope that if you're finishing it right now, you'll have received something from it. I hope that you have a good idea about who you are, and I hope that you continue to work at it. May we all continue to learn to be ourselves. | | | Posted 5/6/2008 3:58 AM - 62 Views - 6 eProps - 4 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
|
