Thinking About Thinking

So you’re getting ready to start college. The seemingly endless onslaught of shiny view-books and postcards and pseudo-personalized emails from colleges is behind you. You’re done with campus visits and college fairs and application essays. You’ve received your fat envelopes and chummy congratulations from admissions deans and made your choice. Senior spring, prom, graduation – check, check, and check. The roommate questionnaire, health forms, and course pre-registration process are done, or soon will be, and now you’re pretty much monitoring your class Facebook page and hanging out with your friends until it’s time to start packing the car.

It’s July. Aside from the odd inquiry from the housing office or the people planning orientation there really isn’t anything else you should be doing to get ready for college, right?

Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not.

It turns out that there is more to getting ready for and succeeding in college than just doing.

Doing in college is important. Being engaged and active in the life of the campus is critical. Completing assignments and meeting deadlines and taking exams are all essential.

But just doing is not enough. Success in college isn’t only about checking off items on a “To DO” list. Succeeding in college – which is to say learning in college – is also about thinking and reflecting and considering and questioning.

Okay, I know. It’s not exactly a newsflash that going to college is going to involve thinking. Fair enough.

But I’m not talking about the obvious kinds of thinking associated with paying attention in class and taking notes and reading assigned texts. Or trying to discern what your professors or the members of your study group or your roommates think.

I’m talking about figuring out what you think.

I’m talking about making time to think. Time to be with your own thoughts. Time to be with yourself.

It’s not as easy as you might imagine. The way we live our lives in the 21^st Century is so hectic and so connected that we are almost never alone; even when there is no one else around.

Right at this very moment I am the living hypocritical embodiment of the point I’m trying to make.

I am writing this post at my desk at home. My email is open on my laptop so I hear a little ping every time a new message comes in. Four inches to the left on the desk is my smartphone which rings when a call comes in and buzzes and chimes when a text or Facebook update or tweet arrives. I have a Fitbit on my wrist that I check periodically (who knew you could rack up so many steps just pounding away on a laptop keyboard?). And my iPad is open on the other side of the desk so I can listen to music, follow the Red Sox score, and Google something if I need to without having to switch windows on my computer. (It’s absurd, I know.) And down the hall a television is on that I hope one of my family members is actually watching – though there is just as good a chance that whoever turned it on is texting a friend or listening to his iPod or reading her Nook.

Every germ of an original thought or momentary drift towards unraveling a complex idea that I am trying to foster is one Facebook “Like” away from temporary derailment or permanent destruction. Fortunately, I’m old and boring and I don’t have that many friends who are disciples of Mark Zuckerberg so my electronic interruptions are kept to a minimum. But you know what I mean.

The point is that we live our lives in ways that require a deliberate act – or four or five deliberate acts – just to be alone and to sit and think.

And here’s the thing: sitting and thinking is important. Making time and space to reflect matters. Being with yourself – learning to identify and consider and know your own thoughts – is essential.

I’m raising this now, before you get to college, because now is a particularly good time for you to be thinking about thinking. And, it will be a lot harder to do so after the academic year begins.

On campus you’ll almost certainly be living in a residence hall room with all the kinds of technology you can imagine in close proximity. You will be surrounded by other people (nice and interesting people who you will want to spend lots of time talking with – as you should) and an almost endless list of things to do and ways to occupy yourself. You will have reading to complete and papers to write and tests to study for. You will have campus jobs and rehearsals and athletic practices and club meetings to attend. You will have parties and performances and movies to go to. And it is incredibly easy to get caught up in all of it and to be so busy and working so hard and having so much fun that you don’t actually ever make time to be with yourself.

In the end, though, almost all learning is a solitary act. To be sure, dialogue and conversation are often critical components to the educational process. Lively discussion and debate is frequently the gateway to new ideas and ways of thinking. But understanding is born of reflection. Knowing is necessarily and uniquely personal and private.

Look, I’m not suggesting that you become a hermit or a recluse. Hardly.

I’m simply advising that you unplug, power down, and spend some time on your own.  So whether you do your best thinking on long walks or writing in a journal before you go to sleep or holed up with a cup of coffee in the student center doesn’t matter. You will figure out what works best for you.

What matters is that you make thinking a priority and you give yourself time to do it.