Hello all!,

The following is a song from a past Tony Award winning musical, Spring Awakening:

If you listen to the words, you can see some resonance with this song in terms of the "In Loco Parentis" view of higher education, and yes haha, they are chanting latin at the beginning... if you are imaginative enough, maybe you can make out the words 'In Loco Parentis'... too much of a stretch? The way that this form of higher education is described seems slightly oppressive. Today, I think of higher education as not only an experience in learning what your major has to offer, but an experience in learning about and exploring life. I'm not saying that this is what all parents would want, but in order to teach to the strictest of parental values, it would likely be necessary. The song is focusing on a character's feeling of oppression in a world of knowledge, and I think this would be the sentiment of many students.

 "I'm calling, to know the world's true yearning... the hunger that a child feels for everything they're shown."

This may be the most crucial line in this song, as I think it represents a strong mindset of people our age. This ties into the Values Based and Spiritual Leadership that we talked about last week, but the modern perspectives of higher education are really a call for students to find meaning in every aspect of their life. I would be lying if I said there were not hundreds of times when I felt like a kid because of how little I knew about a certain subject, but there have been so many times at Ohio State where I feel so fueled about world issues that I just want to jump up on a table and proclaim me need to change the world. And because of the way higher education is set up, I truly believe that I am capable of doing so.

I truly think that there is one singular word that can define why this is so important for us to learn about in college:

Appreciation. 

I know a bunch of students outside Ohio State who still feel like this in their college experiences: 

 And while I sometimes feel like this, overcome with all the things I am always busy with: 

In the end of the day, I am left to be nothing but thankful for all the opportunities that I have been able to pursue. (If you could not tell, I really wanted to use that GIF of Kermit).

The Student Services Movement just seems so sensible that it is hard to imagine a campus without it. An accent on the outside-the-classroom experiences is what has truly formed my college experience to be what it is. Chickering's Psychosocial Theory outlines a very crucial process for all college students. In my opinion, the greatest step within this process is developing purpose. While I think I used to look a lot more like Kermit the Frog above, I think that my ability to develop purpose at Ohio State has really made my passion and involvement more creative and focused, providing me with a reason to be thankful, rather than a reason to start spazzing like our dear friend Kermy. In looking through the influencing vectors, I truly think that friends, groups, and student culture has been the most influencing, and what I have used to find a lot of my purpose. Perry's Cognitive Theory gets at the very important topic of commitment, which I think a lot of students can struggle to develop if not given the creative freedom to explore knowledge. Under "In Loco Parentis" I imagine students struggled in this sense because some were being forced to commit to ideas that lacked passion from their perspective.   

The Leadership Identity Model is also extremely purpose driven. In looking at the steps of awareness, exploration, leadership identified, leadership differentiated, generativity, and synthesis, it may seem at first that it is implying that every leader takes the same journey. However, I think what it truly means is that each leader takes a journey that is defined by their exploration and finding to them what truly matters. As I said before, there is a big difference between a leader who is intentional in pursuing what they are passionate about, and a leader who simply leads to lead. The latter can get stressed easily and find themselves unfocused, while the intentional, passionate leader can use their passion to form their leadership and their actions they will take as a leader.  

Finally, I will leave you with a picture of Milou. He has nothing to do with this post, but he is the greatest dog ever:

Make the World Better,

Anooj