Time Of Our Lives
September 16, 2008
"Enjoy college - it is the best time of your life." - this was a comment that I frequently heard from colleagues during my internship last winter. But what exactly makes college so wonderful? Probably not the classes, or the exams, or the papers... it can't be money, as students are usually beyond poor, surviving on Ramen noodles that they buy in bulk when they go on sale; so what is it?
Last year I read Dan Gilbert's best-seller Stumbling on Happiness. Gilbert's central thesis is that we are terrible at imagining what will make us happy, and thus we make poor decisions about how to live our lives. When it comes to college, most folks claim to know what they want in the future: they want the exciting job; they want lots of money; they want a big house in the suburbs, on an acre of grass; they want a fancy car and they want to share all of these things with their life partner.
So why do the people who have the career and the spouse and the money and house in the suburbs tell me that the best time of their lives was when they were writing papers and cramming for exams, and when they were poor and living in dorms or apartments with 7 roommates?
I believe the answer is the environment. Colleges are some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in America; every meal you eat in a cafeteria is with hundreds of peers around; most of your friends live just a flight of stairs or short walk away; few students have access to a car, but who cares? the commute to class is a short walk away!
As a society, we decided that after graduation we want to live in the least densely populated neighborhoods in America and eat meals alone in front of the TV; our friends live in other far-flung suburbs, possibly on the complete other side of town; we spend hours per day, days per year, sitting in a car and staring at the road ahead.
So here is a radical idea... we take the things that have made us happy: living in densely populated neighborhoods, near our friends and close to work; then we combine them with what we think we want: the career, the money, the awesome home. Maybe it won't change the fact that Americans in general are unhappy, but maybe we can bring down the number a little bit? After all, if the statistics in that article are right, and 48% of us believe our parents were better off than we are, why don't we ditch the super-suburban lifestyle we've developed and start living more the way our parents lived?
Last year I read Dan Gilbert's best-seller Stumbling on Happiness. Gilbert's central thesis is that we are terrible at imagining what will make us happy, and thus we make poor decisions about how to live our lives. When it comes to college, most folks claim to know what they want in the future: they want the exciting job; they want lots of money; they want a big house in the suburbs, on an acre of grass; they want a fancy car and they want to share all of these things with their life partner.
So why do the people who have the career and the spouse and the money and house in the suburbs tell me that the best time of their lives was when they were writing papers and cramming for exams, and when they were poor and living in dorms or apartments with 7 roommates?
I believe the answer is the environment. Colleges are some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in America; every meal you eat in a cafeteria is with hundreds of peers around; most of your friends live just a flight of stairs or short walk away; few students have access to a car, but who cares? the commute to class is a short walk away!
As a society, we decided that after graduation we want to live in the least densely populated neighborhoods in America and eat meals alone in front of the TV; our friends live in other far-flung suburbs, possibly on the complete other side of town; we spend hours per day, days per year, sitting in a car and staring at the road ahead.
So here is a radical idea... we take the things that have made us happy: living in densely populated neighborhoods, near our friends and close to work; then we combine them with what we think we want: the career, the money, the awesome home. Maybe it won't change the fact that Americans in general are unhappy, but maybe we can bring down the number a little bit? After all, if the statistics in that article are right, and 48% of us believe our parents were better off than we are, why don't we ditch the super-suburban lifestyle we've developed and start living more the way our parents lived?
So why do the people who have the career and the spouse and the money and house in the suburbs tell me that the best time of their lives was when they were writing papers and cramming for exams, and when they were poor and living in dorms or apartments with 7 roommates?
It's not the term papers that people remember, it's the life with lots of fun and no permanent consequences of same, and lots of people your own age around who are available for whatever. And time, lots and lots of time. Time to do what you want right now, time to recover from whatever mistakes you make, time to figure it out before you have to really be responsible for anything.
I'll grant you, that doesn't really explain suburbia. Or 7 year car loans.