Strive for the greater gifts! (1 Corinthians 12:31)
It’s early in the new semester of fall 2014. I walked into our campus bookstore the other day and found the usual line which forms at the beginning of a new school year. The place packed with students who had that look on their faces that said, “This semester I’m going to get my act together.” The fall semester always brings new determination and focus.
In The New York Times Sunday Review article The Secret Effects of Motivation, by Amy Wrzreniewski and Barry Schwartz (July 4, 2014) related a study of West Point Cadets that found that when students were motivated by higher values (make the world better, be a better person, a person who understands the world, become a leader, etc.,) they did better in their academics and five years out of college were doing better in life than those who studied to get a better job, make more money or become famous. They studied 11,000 cadets. Most surprising was the singular higher value motivation that did better than those with mixed motivations was create a better world and get a good job!
Most schools today emphasize the external motivation. They focus on getting a better job, higher pay or ways to become famous. Perhaps Campus Ministry might be one of the few places students hear and study how to become better persons, discover who God wants them to be, or how to use ones gifts to make our world better. Perhaps Campus Ministry is one of the few places on a campus where they are encouraged to focus on what is really important: the higher things.
When I’m asked to address new first year students, I often tell them our University and its faculty will help them become something: a lawyer, a teacher, a nurse, a business person, or a physician. Campus ministry helps them become someone. Our systems today can focus so much on getting the job and becoming something that becoming someone can get lost.
We all know the great questions of every person still remain: Who am I? What is my purpose? Will my life have meaning? As Christians and Catholics I think we can add, “How do I become the person God created me to be?” I find it interesting that these questions and the process of wrestling to answer them might have more impact on their success than doing what’s needed to get a good job.
It’s consoling to think we’ve always been helping students ask the right questions and perhaps more important, helping them interiorize the answers. C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters reflects “They have real experiences, but do they ask what these experiences really mean?” (my paraphrase). I find the hectic schedules students have today cause them to consume one experience after another, with little time to reflect on, ‘what does this really mean for my life?”
Yes the lines are long in the bookstore. Once again students are determined to get their acts together and focus. Perhaps we can help them focus on the things that really matter and along the way help them be more successful.
The Adventure of 2014-2015 begins!
Father Ted Brown, ms
Catholic Campus Chaplain at LIU Post, Brookville, NY
Provincial Councilor, Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette