Gideon Strauss continues the series at Comment on the theme of making the most of college. He writes:
College is a time for falling in love, reading great books, and asking big questions. It is a time for adventure and exploration, discovery and delight-for "tensed leisure," as Calvin Seerveld sometimes calls it. While our deepest loves may take root in childhood, it is in our young adult years that we are most likely to begin to articulate the implications of what we love for how we hope to live. For those of us privileged to spend time at college, the provocations offered by books and movies, paintings and songs, teachers and friends encountered during these years bring us to question the answers we have inherited from our parents.
Sometimes we appropriate those answers for ourselves with deepened conviction, and sometimes-wrenchingly-we reach for other more convincing and more coherent answers. It is a time in which we can try out different ideas, ways of life, kinds of work, with a little more wiggle-room in the face of destiny, and a little more tolerance from others for backing out of options we find to be cul-de-sacs.
Strauss goes on to address seven basic questions about life to which all students should seek answers while they're in college:
- What do I love?
- What do I believe?
- Where do I belong?
- Who am I?
- What hurt needs healing in the world?
- What potential waits to be realized?
- What is to be done?
Each of these questions receives elaboration on the post. It's a good read for students and parents of students.