What If We Have It All Wrong?

Photo credit: Family Moments

The majors listed on our diplomas and qualifications inventoried on our resumes say far less about us than the intangible things that actually give our lives meaning, though we seem to forget that. The university was not always seen as a stepping stone into the corporate world or the endless frontier of networking. In the American university system’s original conception, colleges were meant to help students in their pursuit of the good, true, and beautiful. The university was meant to help build valuable relationships – not for networking or Student Investment Fund pitches – but for the pursuit of real connection and meaning.

For many Claremont students, this is not the case. College is a stepping stone into a landscape of careerism and social networks, not an opportunity to appreciate the world around them and earnestly seek knowledge from their peers. Education teaches them how to use Excel, balance an account, or prepare a slide deck rather than read, discuss, and answer questions of meaning. While they await a future of desk jobs and spreadsheets, they slate their schedule with pre-professional clubs and institute work to pad their resumes. Relationships, romantic and platonic, fall to the wayside. After all, what can these things do for your career? 

I’m guilty of this too. My freshman year, I gave in to the club rush, applied for 10+ internships, and saw a post-grad stint at Bain on my horizons. I broke up with my high school boyfriend to focus on my academics, network, and professional relationships. My uncertainty about the future seemed easily remedied by a full resume, pre-professional societies, and a manicured LinkedIn page. It felt like the right thing to do – after all, this was the strategy of my peers, so why would I do any different? I even wrote a paper for my Freshman Humanities Seminar arguing that college serves the sole purpose of being a technical skills training ground for the workforce. 

But when I succumbed to this reality – resigning myself to a life of 9-5s and networking masked as “friendships” – I felt sick. It was too simple: classes and clubs turning into a junior year internship turning into a job offer turning into a career. Career, marriage, kids. By order of importance. My life was laid out for me, and I was terrified. I didn’t understand how this plan was “the good life.” After all, who was I going to live this life with? My 500+ LinkedIn connections? 

When I was going into my senior year of high school, I worked at a Christian summer camp where I struck the perfect balance between leisure and hard work. For every hour scrubbing toilets and washing dishes, I spent an equal amount of time having meaningful conversations in the search for truth and playing silly games with middle schoolers. My life was no longer just my own – I shared it with a community who cared for me the way I did for them. I can’t help but think that this is what life is supposed to look like: hard work followed by engaging in the worthwhile pursuit of meaning, connection, and joy.

Most of the friends I made there return to camp during the weekends or for summer after summer to continue mowing lawns, washing dishes, and playing tag with 5th graders. Many have since married, started their careers, or had kids. Every day they have no idea what the future may hold ten years down the line, but they know they’ll face it together. While all of our lives are plagued with uncertainty, theirs are padded with the comfort of someone to face the days’ challenges with. While I worry about getting an A in economics or whether Path Consulting will let me in after my technical interview, they go home to their families and read to their kids. Their jobs are not their lives. They work so that their leisure is all the more valuable.

Our futures might intimidate us, but we should smile through that. This is what life is all about: not knowing what the next week, month, year, or decade may hold, and embracing that uncertainty. We shouldn’t just take risks for career moves, but also for relationships. Sit with someone new, ask that girl on a date, or talk with your professor about their life. In any case, your academics and future career are not the most interesting thing about you. Tell people what you love (and no, it’s not finance). The parts of college you remember will not be the hours spent on a pitch for the Student Investment Fund or building a sterile network. In the grand scheme of life, these things are irrelevant. We should not define our lives based on our transient conceptions of what matters when we are 18-22 years old. 

In his book Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz wrote that “college is not the only chance to learn to think. It is not the first; it is not the last; but it is the best.” Rather than giving into careerism and applying to internships to add lines to our resume or pursuing a finance career “because that’s what will make the money,” I encourage us to seek out truth and learn how to think alongside our friends – not just because they could connect us with their dad’s accounting firm. What do we want to define our lives? Our 9-5s? Or perhaps something – or someone – more meaningful that we have yet to discover.