Voices

Carrying On: Undercommitted to eudaimonia

February 13, 2014


Time is a precious commodity, as any Georgetown student will tell you. It is precious not because of an inherent value, but because of how we live in it. But from what I’ve seen during my albeit limited and perhaps idiosyncratic Georgetown experience, I don’t think we really live out our days in a way that does that precious time justice.

If we share the beliefs that our finite lives are about flourishing, and that college is about exploring ways in which we can individually and collectively pursue eudaimonia, our four privileged years on the Hilltop are imbued with a particular importance. It’s not that we stop learning how to flourish after we graduate, but rather that our relative freedom from the constraints of the “real-world” here is unique and unlikely to be felt as such again.

It seems to me that many of us artificially limit our notion of what makes time valuable—for structural, cultural, and individual reasons. From classes to internships to involvement in not one, but multiple student organizations or teams, being perpetually busy (and too often, sleep-deprived) is nothing less than the Hoya norm. But while being busy may be a sign of productivity, it’s not necessarily symptomatic of flourishing.

For starters, our academic life does not lend itself to a healthy attitude toward time. Take, for example, the three-credit system, in which five classes a semester is the standard course load. Sure, this set-up lends itself nicely to breadth in the curriculum—one of the hallmarks of a liberal arts education. But there are diminishing returns on additional classes. Having to manage one’s brain space between five different sets of readings, ideas, professors, and the like is an obstacle to really engaging the subject material of each as we’d like: by doing all of the readings in depth, putting in sufficient effort on papers, going to office hours with partially ruminated questions to discuss.

Oftentimes, students opt to take an “easy class” as their fifth course because they want that time to focus on the material in their other classes. The Provost had a point when he wrote in his blog last December that this behavior also indicates a pressure to achieve high grades—but as a student who constantly finds herself in need of time to properly digest the classes she is most invested in, this phenomenon more closely reflects the pressure to make the most of my time learning outside the classroom.

Changing the structure of academic life would help, but would more likely than not be insufficient. Wouldn’t more students just take on more responsibilities with all that extra brain space? Earnestly transforming our attitude towards the time we have would entail deep reflection, and probably, as a result, a restructuring of our priorities as students in formation.

I’ve tried to commit to that reevaluation in my junior year. I was the typical overcommitted first-year, still pretty overcommitted as a sophomore, and remained too busy for my own good as a junior. But this semester, I’ve taken a step back from most of my activities to dedicate much of my energy to the few that mean the most to me, and I’ve also made a point to take four classes to maximize my learning. Though I haven’t filled my freed time with an internship or another resume-builder, I have made one new commitment—to live my time wisely.

What does this mean for me? I’ve started a two-person weekly book club with my new philosofriend. I make it a point to explore D.C.’s wonderful art offerings, and   I have plans to go to the National Gallery every week or two as part of an art history and aesthetics curriculum my friend and I are designing. I’m also starting a band with a few of my guitar-owning friends (we’ve creatively called it Guitar Owner), and writing the lyrics to an original song. I’m going to the office hours of my favorite professors without an agenda, but just to say hi and enjoy their company.

I’m doing what fosters the best in me, and will set me up to flourish and grow. These things won’t do the same for everyone else, but we should all make an effort to find and do that which will improve the quality of our time here. For the love of life, let’s keep go-getting, but let’s also take the time to sit back and bask in the glory of learning, of our youth, and of each other.



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Stacy

you can’t have a club with two people in it. Jesus Christ, what an amateur