We live in a society that demands our time like never before. Often, if there is a lull in our day and we find ourselves with nothing to do, one of two things happens: We feel extremely uncomfortable and thus find something to busy ourselves with, or we collapse into a Netflix and pajama, do-nothing party.
“For me, grades have always been such a huge expectation in my family, so going to college I kind of had the same expectation for myself,” said senior communication studies major Sarah Steuer. “Sometimes you just need to take time away, even though it may mean taking time away from doing your assignment. It’ll make you feel better. Sometimes you miss important social interactions when you’re so focused on school. You don’t want to say that you went to college and only did homework and never made an impact on someone.”
It seems that students struggle to find a healthy balance in their college careers. Many students deal with what our generation refers to as “fear of missing out,” or “FOMO.” However, we know that our grades and the efforts we make now in our classes and in our extracurriculars (internships, clubs, sports and other activities) will help prepare us for our future careers, passions and hobbies.
American culture tells us that we need to invest in our careers and our salaries, yet Christ tells us we need to invest in our brothers and sisters. How do we live in this culture in a way that reflects Christ while being sucked into corporate lives? How do we find that balance? What is actually important in this season of our lives, and where should our priorities lie?
“At this point we are students, and our priority should be as students because not only are we paying for our education, but that’s our role at this point in time,” said senior biochemistry major Christopher Cronkite. “We are allocated to this time of studying, and learning and trying to understand how or where we fit in to the rest of our lives in a sense. That should be our top priority.”
Many of us feel this pressure, and when we are not measuring up to academic standards, we feel like failures. We feel that we are not living up to our full potential, and we are failing in our purpose and our identities. Have you ever noticed that even at a Christian university, we somehow end up finding our purpose and our identity in our future? That’s often what we strive for and put our energy toward.
The faculty and administration have made it their mission to address this very issue this year by focusing on what it means to live a life of “shalom.”
“The questions you are asking from a student perspective are the same questions that faculty, staff and administrators are also asking,” said Sarah Visser, chair and assistant professor of the Department of Leadership and Organizational Psychology. “I think the pursuit of shalom is a lifelong concept. And rather than misconstrue shalom to be the absence of chaos, I think it’s important for us to pursue what it means to experience human flourishing in the midst of all that we encounter.”
Many of us tend to gravitate toward extreme responses because we don’t really know how to function in gray areas, but perhaps this notion of living our lives in a way that is integrated as opposed to balanced is how we should approach our demands.
We need to own our choices and understand the implications of what it means to make a commitment. However, the extremely black-and-white concept of “more of this, less of that” will not win out for anyone. There will always be something to be compromised.
There will always be an excuse to make and it is understandably difficult. In the end, though, we have something that others do not, the joy, hope and strength that we find through Christ. We must allow this to emanate from and penetrate every essence of our being.