The Fall season often invokes feelings of change or transformation in people; when nature around us is moving, we cannot help but get swept up with it. When the leaves begin to turn from shades of green to hues of orange and the days get shorter, our hearts and minds are subtly (perhaps subconsciously) poised for change. I have been thinking a lot about change this semester and its implications on our lives. There are two forms of change we encounter; I’ll call them passive and intentional.
We all inevitably experience passive change while at college; many students are transitioning into adulthood, and our ideas and perceptions on a variety of issues are challenged, reshaped, or refined. Perhaps we discover passions or interests previously unknown to us, creating change in our form of expression or how we spend our time. I would classify these forms of change as passive; we do not seek this change out; it comes to us organically without our consent, and we simply flow into these changes like a stream flowing into a river.
This isn’t the sort of change I want to discuss; what I am interested in and have been spending a lot of time reflecting on is intentional change.
Intentional change differs from passive in that it must be sought out; an individual deliberately establishes the subject of what is to change. I believe intentional change is also an inevitable experience in college. Some examples might be deciding to make healthier choices in food or picking a new major to pursue. But how often do we acknowledge our academic or intellectual weaknesses with a mind towards improvement or outright development of these areas? It’s easy to get fixated on the goal of achieving our major or trade. While it is undoubtedly essential to achieve the goals we have established for ourselves, I think our time in college is a wonderful opportunity for change. To use myself as an example, I have been made acutely aware that I lack natural ability in creative writing (poems, fiction, drama).
Tell me I must write a poem, and a pit of anxious despair immediately forms in my stomach. Fortunately, my major doesn’t require me to take any courses that would put me in situations where I may be required to participate in a creative writing assignment. I can go about the rest of my time at Reedley College without further considering this “shortcoming” of mine. But, as I mentioned, heart and mind have been poised for change driven by nature’s indomitable efficacy.
At this moment, I find cannot resign myself to knowing I am deficient in an intellectual area of my life and not take advantage of the fact that I am in a time and place where the opportunity for pursuing improvement is so readily before me. A school of thought postulates that our ability to learn is limited by genetics. Perhaps this is true: maybe I can’t change my writing abilities, or maybe they can only progress to a limited degree. Or maybe I am unrestricted in opportunities for intellectual growth and change? And the heights attainable are limited only by the level of effort I exert in attempting to improve. I am not sure it truly matters either way whether my abilities are determined outside my control or if they are limitless. I can only ever discover what I am capable of by attempting to do so.
I am intentionally pursuing change; I have opted to take some courses to discover how far I can improve my writing abilities. I’m terrified of the endeavor, but I think a big part of change often involves overcoming fear as well. I hope you’ll join me in pursuing intentional change during our respective academic journeys; let us not settle for just getting by but reach out our hands and, at the very least, grasp for something more.
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