Reading & Digesting
How to Live Wisely
Richard J. Light
1   Imagine you are Dean for a day. What is one actionable change you would implement to enhance the college experience on campus?
2  I have asked students this question for years. The answers can be eyeopening. A few years ago, the responses began to move away from “improve the history course” or “change the ways labs are structured.” A different commentary, about learning to live wisely, has emerged.
3   What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions?
4   A number of campuses have recently started to offer an opportunity for students to grapple with these questions. On my campus, Harvard, a small group of faculty members and deans created a non-credit seminar called “Reflecting on Your Life.” Here are three exercises that students find particularly engaging. Each is designed to help freshmen identify their goals and reflect systematically about various aspects of their personal lives, and to connect what they discover to what they actually do at college.
5   For the first exercise, we ask students to make a list of how they want to spend their time at college. What matters to you? This might be going to class, studying, spending time with close friends, perhaps volunteering in the off-campus community or reading books not on any course’s required reading list. Then students make a list of how they actually spent their time, on average, each day over the past week and match the two lists.
6   Finally, we pose the question: How well do your commitments actually match your goals?
7   A few students find a strong overlap between the lists. Te majority don’t. They are stunn
ed and dismayed to discover they are spending much of their precious time on activities they don’t value highly. Te challenge is how to align your time commitments to reflect your personal convictions.
8   In the core values exercise, students are presented with a sheet ofvalues翻译 paper with about 25 words on it. The words include “dignity,” “love,” “fame,” “family,” “excellence,” “wealth,” and “wisdom.” They are told to circle the five words that best describe their core values. Now, we ask, how might you deal with a situation where your core values come into conflict with one another? Students find this question particularly difficult. One student brought up his own personal dilemma: He wants to be a surgeon, and he also wants to have a large family. So his core values include the words “useful” and “family.” He said he worries a lot whether he could be a successful surgeon while also being a devoted father. Students couldn’t stop talking about his example, as many saw themselves facing a similar challenge.
9 The third exercise presents the parable of a happy fisherman living a simple life on a sma
ll island. Te fellow goes fishing for a few hours every day. He catches a few fish, sells them to his friends, and enjoys spending the rest of the day with his wife and children, and napping. He couldn’t imagine changing a thing in his relaxed and easy life.
10 Let’s tweak the parable: A recent M.B.A. visits this island and quickly sees how this fisherman could become rich. He could catch more fish, start up a business, market the fish, open a cannery, maybe even issue an I.P.O. Ultimately he would become truly successful. He could donate some of his fish to hungry children worldwide and might even save lives.
11 “And then what?” asks the fisherman.
12 “Then you could spend lots of time with your family,” replies the visitor. “Yet you would make a difference in the world. You would have used your talents, and fed some poor children, instead of just lying around all day.”
13  We ask students to apply this parable to their own lives. Is it more important to you to h
ave little, be less traditionally successful, yet be relaxed and happy and spend time with your family? Or is it more important to you to work hard, perhaps start a business, or even make the world a better place along the way?
14  Typically, this simple parable leads to substantial disagreement. These discussions encourage first-year undergraduates to think about what really matters to them, and what each of us feels we might owe, or not owe, to the broader community — ideas that our students can capitalize on throughout their time at college.
15   At the end of our sessions, I say to my group: “Tell me one thing you have changed your mind about this year,” and many responses reflect a remarkable level of introspection. Three years later, when we ask them again, nearly all report that the discussions had been valuable, a step toward turning college into the transformational experience it is meant to be.

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