Making the Best of a College Experience

By Broadside Opinion Columnist Scott Mason

To show that experience is not something that should be taken lightly, we need not look at the sordid, drawn-out affairs of those running for president, but instead we should turn to ourselves, college students in the 21st century. We, as we are dawning onto this new age, are finding that we carry many more experience-laden tasks than many of those before us. Many of us have at least 20-hour a week jobs, with the possibility of taking on an internship on top of being full-time students. We seem to exist in a world laden with making the most of our college experience.

Though this experience of college is known to be different from one student to the next, the two things that we must insure are balance and quality. We must balance the fun and farce with the mundane and studious habitual actions of our vocation, which is to be students. The quality of our experience is also in the equation, because your time in college and the moments you spend there should not be felt as wasted. But, who is to say what waste is?

Upon my own accord, I have come to the best possible definition of good balance. The concept of balance, or moderation depending on the context, is one we all know, tried and true. We know that things like work, alcohol, food, and let’s face it, sex, are best done under the supervision of our conscience. We owe it to our bodies to allow some limits upon us, to more or less balance the scales within our minds. The work and play dualism is never more important a dualistic mantra to ingrain into our skulls than at this point and time. To know that it is important to work hard, but also take that time in whatever way that may be to refresh, relax and have just a plain good old time.

The key phrase there is “good.” Not perfect. Sadly, many of us haven’t realized that perfection is out of our hands. There may be times that we feel like we are in the perfect relationship, the perfect moment, the perfect class, the perfect internship or job, but the fact remains that each of us has at least one flaw. The world before man existed wasn’t, Biblically speaking, perfect. It was “good.” That means that the religions that many of us put so much or so little faith in, have a God who didn’t even achieve perfection. The world was good, and so goodness is the mark to achieve. To have goodness or wholesomeness, though, is something we all need and want, and thus work to attain.

So to have a good college experience, one with the quality we need, we need to make sure that we are doing whatever it is to achieve goodness in our tasks. That may mean taking the internship that pays nothing if it means we are going to have fun working and end up with a great résumé. It may mean that we need not limit our potential when the experience is becoming something adverse to the experience we expected. To make the best of everything is what we need not always the most. Again, balance is key.

So where does that lead us, as over-stretched and stressed students, in what feels like the real world on crack?

We have to look into our lives and think about if what we are doing is in line with what we want in life holistically. What do we want to achieve in our lifetime? Do we want to leave behind a legacy? Do we want to be seen as having great experience and that we are now qualified to merely fill a line on a payroll check or are we in this world to live good lives? Experience always matters, but as we go into the election and these debates, is the experience always good, fulfilling experience or is it poor undermining and insufficient? Living through events may have proved your resolve, but has it prepared you for everything you are going to encounter in the entirety of life? Ask these questions and I feel like all of us will be able to make the most informed decisions in November and then for the rest of our lives. Here’s to a good life.