In a 2015 seminar, Reflection on Your Life, Harvard Professor Richard Light asked a group of first year students:
Would you rather understand one idea fully or many ideas at a reasonable surface understanding?
Seems like a reasonable question to ask 18 year olds so they can more likely live purposefully during their limited college years.
The New York Times also published other popular seminar questions for students who will start college in the fall to consider:
For the first exercise, we ask students to make a list of how they want to spend their time at college. What matters to you?
Then students make a list of how they actually spent their time, on average, each day over the past week and match the two lists.
Finally, we pose the question: How well do your commitments actually match your goals?
Soon-to-be high school seniors and community college transfer applicants would also be wise to ponder the above questions, as part of their reflections for the college essay writing process.
Each fall, when students reflect on their lives in order to argue their worth as a candidate for admissions, they gain confidence in their experiences, often defining their aptitude. Furthermore, in understanding their life’s purpose, students devise a vision which they can begin realizing during college. Then, they can live consciously and have a peace of mind.