Thinking About College

I recently spoke to the senior class at a Catholic High School about preparing for the college campus and I began by posing to them a scenario and question that I often ask college students: Imagine yourself 20 years from now. For seniors in high school this would mean you are 37-38 years old, well into your career, and have started a family. At that time what do you think will be more important to you: 1) The job you have and how good you are at your job or 2) Your family and how good of a father/mother and husband/wife you are?

Almost unanimously every time, everyone chooses option number 2. We think and believe that the type of father/mother and husband/wife we become will be much more important to us than our future job. What is fascinating about this question is that while almost everyone chooses option 2, everyone thinks about college and those four years almost exclusively in relation to their future career. College students spend so much time studying and choosing a specific major and taking specific classes and doing extracurricular activities and summer internships all designed to help them get the job they want and to be good at that job. Hour and hours of thought, time, and energy are poured into this. Yet very little thought prior to college and during college is spent on becoming the type of person you want to become. If our future family and how good we are as a family person will ultimately be more important to us, should we not spend at least equal or more thought, time, and energy designated to how we can be better at that?

The sad part is that not only do high school and college students spend little time thinking about and preparing to be the future husband/wife and father/mother they want to be, most live a way during college that actually leads them further away from that goal. Will living a life for four years of seeking constant pleasure make us a better future family person? Will engaging in the hook-up culture and having multiple sexual partners? Will getting drunk regularly and/or doing different drugs? It would be very convenient if we could live a certain way for 3-4 years and then stop and start over from scratch. The reality is that human experience shows us that that isn’t how we as humans work. The way you live in college will form certain habits and ways of thinking and seeing the world that will stick with you long after you graduate.

I also talked about this idea that college is “the four best years of your life.” It’s a phrase we have all heard and most likely said ourselves. I was very much looking froward to college for this reason and spent much of my time seeking to make college exactly that. What this usually boils down to is the free living and party culture of college. However, I think it would be helpful to take a second look at this idea. Let’s say that it actually is the case. Well, if college is “the four best years of your life” then that means at age 22/23 it will be all downhill from there. At age 22/23 you will have peaked and life will only get worse. That’s a depressing thought and no one wants that to be the case.

Sitting here at age 30 and after having been married and had my first child, I can emphatically say life only gets much, much better. It is not even comparable. My hope is that for not a single person that college is the best four years of their life and that they don’t strive for that or live under the illusion that it is. Studies and experience show us that the people who put virtue and their faith on the back burner during college, saying they will worry about that after college, keep those same bad habits post-graduation and usually never end up coming back to the Church. Along with college being “the four best years of your life” the idea that “I will worry about that after college” is another huge lie and false premise we too often tell ourselves.

College is an amazing and unique time in someone’s life and all of this is not to burst the bubble and excitement of college, the very opposite! College students will have more free time than at any other point in their lives, they will have access to so many unique opportunities that will be harder to come by post-graduation. Take advantage of those opportunities and use them to form yourself into the type of person you want to become. The type of father/mother and husband/wife that you want to become. Who you become is more important than what you do. High school and college students need to make specific goals to grow in virtue and their faith during college and they need to take practical steps to accomplish those goals. Join a small group Bible study, go on a mission trip, go to great Catholic retreats and conferences. Do no try to maintain your faith in college, because if you do, you will probably lose it. Your goal should never be to maintain it, but to grow in your faith and your relationship with Jesus Christ.