“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”– Aristotle
I’ll be honest with you…I don’t remember a whole lot of what I learned or didn’t learn in the classroom at college. I know I had some remarkable professors. I know I read some amazing books. I learned ideas and principles that I still use today to make valuable decisions and evaluations. A semester of Eastern Religion and Victorian Fiction changed how I saw the world and gave me the power to separate my religion from my faith. It was a semester of Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics that taught me how to differentiate speech from language which taught me how to respect those who looked, sounded and thought differently than me.
I know on paper that I was an average college student…at least that’s what my B- GPA would tell you, but I was a straight-A student out of the classroom.
I chose a small liberal arts college in the middle of Iowa because my college coach was the only college coach in the country who knew who I was, and therefore, the only coach who recruited me. I loved and still love the coach who recruited me to this day, but when the school released him from his contract after my freshman year, it devastated me.
I was a hot mess for the next 12 months, and I had to learn to stop complaining and whining and pointing fingers and look within myself to overcome the loss of the thing that I thought was most important in the world to me: being a basketball player. I had to learn that I was more than that and that my “success” or lack of did not define me. [I may still be working on that one 30 years later.] Humility.
I applied to be a Resident Assistant (a student leader in charge of a floor of a residence hall). I was one of the “lucky” few to be hired in that position until I learned that I was in charge of the fraternity wing (the wildest and most out of control male students on campus.)
Those “classmates” never seemed to sleep. If you’ve seen the movie Animal House, that was the G-version of what I experienced my Junior Year of college. There was rarely a night in which I fell asleep before 3am because of the fraternity’s never ending consumption of loud music, booze, drugs, pulling fire alarms, releasing fire extinguishers, and the great joy of urinating on the RA’s (mine) door every night for 9 straight months. The scene in Animal House where a young Kevin Bacon is in the middle of the parade riot and he screams “All is Well”, and it is obvious that nothing was well, was how I felt for the better part of that year.
By the end of that school year, I think the fraternity brothers and my relationship took a 180 degree turn. I learned to stay out of their way and be someone they could trust, and I started to get invited to go to the bars with them, and sure enough, I started to wake-up without a puddle outside of my door. Resilience.
It was that spring that I was upset that our school was shutting down our school radio station and frustrated we didn’t have a true hangout on campus outside of our dorm. I ran for Student Body President on the platform that I would call for a school-wide student referendum where every student would see a $100 increase in their student activity fee (yes, a tuition (or tax) increase), and the school would agree to build a brand new radio station and coffee house. I won that election in a landslide and convinced the College President to let me perform a referendum. The referendum passed, and the President and Board of Trustees raised tuition and built us a radio station and coffee house over the summer. Commitment.
My senior year, I broke up with my long-term girlfriend and decided that my days of being in a relationship were over. I was going to have fun, be me, and not care what anyone thought. I was going to enjoy my last year with no regrets. I made more friends that year than the previous 3 years from different fraternities and sororities (I was a GDI), different walks of life, different parts of the world, different races and religions, and I had more girls ask me out than I ever thought was possible. Authenticity.
People tell me all the time how much better big public schools are compared to small private schools. I tell them that I left Coe College with the College President, Vice President, Dean of Students and Chair of my Department as my references. I knew them all well and had earned their respect. They all wrote letters for me and called potential employers on my behalf. Would I even have met those people at a big public school? Maybe. Probably not.
Yes, I was a bad student on paper. (I’m still disappointed in myself about that.) Yes, I wish I would have been more disciplined from age 18-22. Yes, I wish I would have been able to see my athletic ability reach its potential. But, am I disappointed I went to college? Hell no! I can write, read, communicate, analyze, evaluate, adapt, overcome and strategize as well as anyone I know. College helped me figure me out by metaphorically throwing my feet into the fire and making me learn how to deal with the heat without getting burned. College was an irreplaceable gift, even though, it was not the gift that most people expect from that type of investment. The return on investment was far greater than any job could have given me. Although I didn’t test well in the classroom, I learned how to be tested and survive before I had to do it in the real world.
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