DJ Mark Twain

Mark Twain once said that there are two days that are most important in a person’s life.  One is the day you were born and the other is the day you figure out why. 

One of the greatest honors and privileges of working with college students is that so many of them share with their teachers the joys and struggles of trying to answer that personal “Why am I here?” question.   

Of course, teachers have no business thinking they can answer that question for students.  But teachers can honor the importance of that question and the courage it takes to ask it.  For a student to even ask “How do I know what is my purpose?” reveals that the student already knows by observing the lives of others that a poor response to that question can lead to a life of regret or misery.   

There were many times when students asked me “How did you know you were meant to be a teacher?”   

I never thought that most students were really asking why I ended up teaching.  Instead, I realized that there was a question beneath the question, and it was “How do people know what they are to do with their lives?”  

It isn’t surprising that many students in our country imagine that the question of what to do with one’s life is about one’s career choice.  I don’t deny that there is some truth in that assumption.  But jobs don’t come with a guarantee of a sense of purpose.  If someone finds the job meaningless and drudgery, no amount of money will satisfy in the long run.    

Recent research about contemporary students seems to suggest students already know this. The evidence is that many students hope that their education focuses on more than skills and careers.  These students are hoping that their education will include study of what makes for a meaningful life.     

Perhaps this finding shouldn’t be that surprising.  Contemporary students seem to be hungry for the type of college-university experience that was more common up until the middle of the last century.  Only seventy years ago, required college courses were as much character-focused as career-focused.  “What makes a good person?” and “what makes an honorable life?” weren’t seen as fuzzy or purely subjective questions but rather issues at the core of a true education.  

An example might shed light on what I mean.  If an education is solely focused on skills and career preparation, the topic of “failure” will be taboo, a topic to avoid.  After all, who wants to fail?  

 But in a study of “what makes an honorable life,” failure is not something altogether negative.  Since failure is unavoidable, something every person will experience at one time or another, doesn’t it make sense for students to consider the positive outcomes that can emerge from failure?  Doesn’t it make sense for students to read and discuss the role failure has played in the lives of some of the wisest women and men in human history?

What is true of the topic of failure is also true of other topics such as integrity, altruism, and social responsibility.  No matter where a person is on the political spectrum, we can all agree that the current cultural divide in our country doesn’t bode well for our future.  That divide has many causes, but isn’t it possible that one cause of the divide is that higher education, with its focus on career success instead of character development, hasn’t aimed high enough?