College Knowledge for the Jewish Student: 101 Tips

7. Chicken Soup: Health and Safety for the Body and Mind

160 Chicken Soup: Health and Safety for the Body and Mind 68 Learn to Enjoy Yourself, Learning, and the College Experience Your life will be much more fulfilling and satisfying if you learn to enjoy who you are and what you do. You have four or more years of college ahead of you, an intensive learning focus throughout college, and, in the years beyond, a lifetime of being with yourself. All of that will be a lot more pleasant if you can find the secret of happiness at college, in your learning, and with yourself. You need to be clear that happiness is not always a ball of laughter. Happiness is not the same as partying. It is important that you be clear about what is meaningful and fulfilling in your life. Money alone or A grades by themselves will not necessarily bring you happiness or enjoyment. In college, you should focus on both the outcome and the process. One outcome is that you will obtain a degree at the end. A second outcome is that you will be a well-educated person. A third outcome is that you will be prepared to be an active and engaged participant in 7 Chicken Soup: Health and Safety for the Body and Mind 161 your community in a diverse democracy. A fourth outcome is that you have become an independent adult. You should feel good if you’re making progress toward those goals. It’s equally important, however, that you learn to enjoy the process of getting to those outcomes. Much of the college experience centers on learning. If you focus only on your grades and not on what you are learning, you may achieve your ultimate goal but be a very unhappy person along the way. If you find classes boring and studying drudgery, you’re in trouble. You want to develop a love of learning. You want to look forward to the intellectual energy of a class discussion with faculty and peers; the exposure to new ideas, perspectives, and discoveries in course readings and assignments; and the intrinsic intellectual thrill every time you gain a new insight. You can worry too much about tests so that you are miserable even when you do well. You can stress constantly about your grade point average so that you are never satisfied or fulfilled, even with perfection. You can be so obsessed with the outcome of graduating from college that you never enjoy the beauty of attending college. The same holds true for enjoying yourself. You need to learn to live comfortably and amicably with yourself. You need to find pleasure and satisfaction in your thoughts, values, actions, and outlook. You need to feel good about yourself, about how you are continuing to develop and grow, and about your abilities to change those areas you want to improve. You may set goals for yourself, but if you don’t enjoy the path to achieving the goals, the successful outcome may not bring you the satisfaction you desire. In college, you want to learn about yourself so you can be a person you like and admire. You want to learn how to enjoy the process of learning because so much of your time and energy will be spent learning. You want to be happy about earning your college degree, but you also want to enjoy the experience of getting your college education. COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE fOr THE JEWiSH STuDENT 162 69 Live a Well-Rounded Life You want to grow and develop as a whole person in college. In order to do this, you need to find ways to be a well-rounded person who takes advantage of the wide range of opportunities available in college. Academics are at the center of a college education. Achieving academic success, in terms of mastery of academic content, skills, and processes, is a critical goal. Developing as an adult and learning how you can best make a difference in the world as an educated individual is a necessity. Learning skills in problem solving, building relationships, and managing conflicts are essential. To accomplish all of these important goals in college, you will need to find balance in your life. You want to begin modeling a healthy, balanced lifestyle that you can sustain throughout your life. Your challenge during college is to succeed academically but at the same time to allow yourself to grow and blossom in many...