The words of Theodore Roosevelt inspired the critically acclaimed book by Brené Brown, “Daring Greatly.”
After several friends suggested it to me, I finally read it and quickly realized the concepts laid out are perfectly applicable for college students.
She starts her book with the words of Roosevelt, “It is not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man struggles who deserves credit in this world, but those who dare greatly.”
Those words could not be more relevant for the average student at a university, especially those stricken with the fear of failure.
This year was my first living on my own, and I realized that I have more independence and responsibility than ever before. Before I left, almost everyone I knew told me of how I needed to be cautious about the ways I spent my time and the relationships I chose to strongly develop.
That is the problem I think many of us are facing in college: being too cautious. We work hard to plan classes months (and even years) in advance, try to foresee career opportunities and often see our years as primarily a means of getting a degree.
I am not advocating for students to not be concerned with graduating, but college and life are about more than cautiously planning to achieve one goal or another.
Life should be about having moving experiences, connecting with wonderful people and doing what fulfills us as individuals. The things we achieve, such as our diplomas, are the means, not the end, to this goal.
In college, we often get these two things confused. We are worried about social failure, so we stick to small talk for months before opening up to anyone at all.
We believe we will not have enough time for schoolwork, so we let the things that fulfill us drift away. We are afraid to do anything too risky because we could fail.
As a person who has done each of those things, let me tell you that life should not be lived like that. Every time I go on a trip, even though I do not know if it will give me enough time when I get back to do my work, every time I put myself on the line socially by being vulnerable with my thoughts and feelings and every time I throw myself into something I am passionate about, I learn that the yield is much greater than the risk.
That does not mean I never regret a decision to put myself out there; it has shown me, though, that we ought to take risks in order to grow as people and to achieve great things in our lives.
My grandfather once told me that life is a journey, not a destination, and that we ought to stop and see what it has to offer. That remains true, even though many of those offerings require us to dare greatly.
Daniel Payne is a freshman integrated marketing communications major from Collierville, Tennessee.
