There’s nothing quite like a mother’s wisdom.
So even though we had been fighting, even though I planned on ignoring her when she came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed, I listened when I recognized the tone she uses to pass down those precious pearls. She said:
“Ellie, college is the most selfish time of our lives. And it’s also when we’re supposed to become the people we’re going to be. Don’t you see a possible problem there?”
I couldn’t pretend like I didn’t.
I had just come home from Duke again, and I didn’t think I had really changed. I had experienced the stereotypical barrage of college firsts, yes, but I was still me. But my mother, always observant, noticed the small differences—hence the fighting. It was the little things, she said: leaving my stuff around, not unloading the dishwasher when it needed to be unloaded, feeling no particular obligation to respond to old acquaintances who had contacted me wanting to hang out.
Selfish, she suggested. I reacted strongly, negatively, defensively.
But—as she had intended—she got me thinking.
At school, we live to better ourselves and we live to enjoy ourselves. We focus on self-improvement: getting smarter and fitter and better at public speaking. We focus on personal achievements: making the A and getting the internship and getting our work published. We focus on having fun.
College is the time to take advantage of the fact that we have the fewest personal ties we’ll ever have. It’s the beautiful break between the days when other people are responsible for us and we’re responsible for other people. In these four years, we celebrate the fact that the strings tying us down are as loose as they’ll ever be.
These are the days when we’re allowed to be—we’re expected to be—selfish.
I think it bothers us, even though we enjoy it enormously. We compensate with grand gestures: we spend summers and breaks volunteering our time; we overwhelmingly support more generous federal programs; we start initiatives about problems we see in the world. We make conscious efforts to give something of ourselves, since so little is being taken in our day-to-day life.
I’m not criticizing any of this. But while we are very giving of ourselves on a grand scale, I sometimes see our selfish lifestyles affecting our day-to-day.
My mother said it was the little things, and I see that, too. We don’t hold doors for each other, focusing instead on an incoming text. We ignore that guy we “met” at Shooters last night in the hopes that we might forget. We talk to our professors about our grades and nothing else, seeing them as a means to an A. We haphazardly break parking gates and litter, forgetting that $60 and an hour of someone’s time were used to clean up our mess. We swipe leftover pizza from the dorm fridge and don’t ask our friends to leave the room when our roommate drops hints about an 8:30 a.m. class.
Our ability to make grand gestures will fade as our ties become more numerous. We won’t always be able to spend a summer of our lives volunteering or starting initiatives to help problems we see in the community. Heck, for many of us, liberalism will give wake to conservatism as we climb up the tax brackets. But we will take the character and personal habits we develop here with us for the rest of our lives. We’ll be considerate and think regularly of others, or we won’t.
This past week, the Honor Council launched a campaign titled YBTT. If we were successful, you saw the slogan popping up all over campus: YBTT flyers playing off the Duke meme craze, foil YBTTs hanging from campus fixtures and even a “mural” on the East Campus bridge. Hopefully the ubiquity of the message prompted you to ask yourself what those letters actually mean. YBTT: You’re better than that.
My mother’s wisdom made that cautionary voice in me louder. When I’m about to do something, however small, that I know doesn’t fit with the person I’d like to be, I now find it more difficult to ignore the voice deterring me. Come on, Ellie, I’ll hear. YBTT. You’re better than that.
The goal of this campaign is to make that voice in all of our heads louder, too. It is too easy to find the words drowned out by the mental to-do list or the pumping bass. But ultimately, we are all in the process of becoming who we will be.
So turn back and hold the door. Ask your professor about his day. Move out of your room to continue the conversation.
Listen to the voice that tells you You’re Better Than That.
Ellie Schaack, Trinity ’15
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.