Enlarge your Imagination
Up to this point, everyone has asked you questions like what do you want to do with your life—by which they usually mean, what job do you want? Perhaps you have also been asked plenty of times another variation: what are you going to study—by which they mean, what are you going to major in? These are important questions, no doubt, but for you who have read this far, these questions are not sufficient; they don’t go nearly deep enough.
Instead, when you consider questions like what do you want to do, reframe them into better questions:
- How am I going to lead?
- What am I going to change?
- What is the “dent in the universe” I’m going to make so that my neighborhood, my community, my country, or my world might flourish?
And when you hear what are you going to study, yet again, re-frame it:
- How might I study all the things that will help me make change in the spaces I’ve chosen to spend my life?
- How might the arts inform the sciences, the sciences inform the arts, the interconnectedness of things be found through my varied curiosities?
- How might I learn to approach the world’s challenges in all their complexities, which confound the stark lines of disciplines and majors?
- How might I become relentless in my pursuit of what is good, true, and beautiful?
- How might I move beyond knowledge toward wisdom?
In this respect, consider what you can learn from Saawan, who studied business at Baylor en route to medical school, with Fulbright ETA award to Montenegro in between. Saawan doesn't just want to practice medicine; he wants to help lead changes and serious re-thinking of certain priorities in the medical profession so that rural communities might thrive. Or consider Sophia, whose route to the US Foreign Service include a combination of Arabic, international studies, and business, as well as transformational internships that helped land her a Rangel Fellowship to study at Columbia University and secure her spot in the US Department of State.
As you begin to enlarge your imagination like Sophia and Saawan, take another cue from their success: they excelled in the classroom. Follow the next link to see how you might consider classroom excellence.