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Printer-Friendly ModeLife lessons require the pain of personal experience
submitted by Aaron Crossen
September 14, 2009 —
Mr. Chipman argues in his column “Many hold wayward perception of what college should be about” that today’s collegebound youths are mistakenly led to believe that once independent, these tragic young souls are destined through the invisible hand of social pressure to make regretful decisions that invariably imperil their future. I don’t disagree with him. But is that such a bad thing?
As he might himself argue, attitudes are forged in the hot fires of experience. The more you experience, the more you understand, and these things influence your behavior. Surely, this axiom applies to activities that Mr. Chipman might deem of questionable moral virtue.
People learn from their mistakes and, by extension, need to make them.
There is no better deterrent to self-inflicted pain than the experience of pain itself.
Let’s give the bus girl some credit and assume she walked into whatever situation that eventually landed her on that bus with some minimal knowledge of the risks involved in doing lots of drugs and/or exchanging bodily fluids with multiple sexual partners. She took the risk and paid for it. But what could be a better deterrent to similar behavior in the future? No matter how many times she was told, by her parents, by her priest, by her dog and by Stuart Chipman not to do what she did, she ended up learning by experience anyway.
The last thing colleges should produce are a bunch of cloistered, ignorant, risk-averse virgins. To use a well-known example, consider Barack Obama. Without making the mistakes and taking the risks he took, would he have forged the man of sound mind and character that he is today?
Risk builds character; it informs views. And experience teaches better than any teacher. Or columnist.
Aaron Crossen
SVSU Alumnus