As freshmen move onto campus, make new friends and settle into their dorms this weekend, their sights will inevitably soon be set on the start of classes and perhaps their professional ambitions.
Soon enough, assignments will begin to pile up, and stress will build. As this happens, students may be tempted to engage in an optimization game of sorts, aiming for maximum efficiency in their coursework and striving to up the marketability of their resume.
Students might feel the urge to Sparknote their readings, brainstorm essay ideas with ChatGPT, multitask during lectures or find other “shortcuts” to learning. While in the moment, such an approach might seem necessary for academic survival or career prospects, it undermines the fundamental purpose of a college education.
These may be shortcuts to a decent grade, but they are not shortcuts to learning. In fact, they diminish students’ opportunity to fully engage in intellectual growth.
To adopt this mindset is to take a constrained view of one’s education. It is to view it not as a means of broadening one’s mind, cultivating the skills of citizenship and growing in virtue, but rather as a game to beat. Assigned readings and essays are seen only as an obligatory burden to be efficiently checked off in Canvas, rather than opportunities to engage with great thinkers and ideas.
Here, students have the opportunity to participate in discussions with leading academics and scholars, far beyond what they had access to in high school. They should enter into the intellectual life of their university or college and take advantage of the immense intellectual opportunities that they have at their disposal for the next four years.
Students should engage fully in discussions with genuine intellectual courage, humility and curiosity. They should go to lectures by prominent visiting academics. They should read books (slowly, not skimming). They should go to office hours and immerse themselves in professors’ subject of expertise.
To incoming freshmen: These things might sometimes seem like a diversion or a distraction from your goals. But to miss them is to miss the opportunity to grow intellectually — the very purpose of going here. These aspects of your experience might not raise your GPA or add bullet points to your resume, but they will reap rewards far beyond these things. Four years here will fly by. Seize this opportunity while it is before you.
