College is one of the most unique times in our entire life. We are met with three challenges all at once. First, we must make the rite of passage into adulthood and begin to take over our own lives. Second, we must learn what it means to be an adult and the responsibilities it entails. Third, we must learn how to balance our lives between being professional and being ourselves. Each of these challenges represents growth within us as well as the overall purpose of higher education.

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College is one of the most unique times in our entire life. We are met with three challenges all at once. First, we must make the rite of passage into adulthood and begin to take over our own lives. Second, we must learn what it means to be an adult and the responsibilities it entails. Third, we must learn how to balance our lives between being professional and being ourselves. Each of these challenges represents growth within us as well as the overall purpose of higher education.

We must constantly remind ourselves to be professional, for it is the cornerstone of our success in life. Putting aside the seemingly lame motivational sound of that statement, it has a lot more bearing than we may care to admit. Our future employers will look back on this specific time of our lives to asses our potential success in their businesses. If we have proven ourselves as professional individuals at everything we’ve done in college, we may also prove to those employers that we will be just as professional in our jobs.

College gives us the unique opportunity to interact with many different people of varying levels of authority. This diversity gives us professional practice while being in a comfortable, less intense environment. We must encourage ourselves to interact with professors and fellow students. The more we do, the more prepared we will be for the working world. Often, when times get tough, we rely on our training or past experiences to pull us through. To get through the rough times in our future careers, we may have to rely on the professional training we gain from college.

Though we should focus on being professional, we must also rememberto be ourselves. We are young and there will never be a better time to express our individuality. There will be many times where our professional lives will rule us and we will have little time to be ourselves. If we allow professionalism to completely rule our college lives, we’re setting precedence for the rest of our lives. Instead of being ourselves, we will be never changing professional drones. Life is about living, so live it with a sense of balance.

Is it possible to achieve this balance in college? In fact, most of us do it on an everyday basis. We must take pride in everything that we do and we must make sure that we are putting our best foot forward. College life is only a small fraction of our lives, but it represents probably the most crucial time when it comes to learning ? learning how to manage and balance our lives, but most importantly, learning how to be ourselves.

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