A few weeks ago, I sat with Langston, an incoming University of Washington student who has now joined more than 7,000 others beginning their college years. He wanted to ask me about classes, careers, opportunities and what he should major in — the possibilities that seem endless at the beginning of a life. He told me he wanted to build his résumé.
I gave him my standard answer: Take advantage of every opportunity. Work hard. Find mentors. Say yes to things that stretch you. Build relationships. Make the most of your time here. It was good advice, but also incomplete.
I was the first in my family to complete a four-year college degree. The university opened doors I could not have imagined. But I’ve also learned that university is not the only path.
Some of the people I love most took different roads. They built families and businesses, cared for parents, coached children, served their communities and showed up for their neighbors. Their lives demonstrated that schooling and education are not synonymous.
I think about this as I and my peers are entering the twilight of our careers. There are more years behind than ahead. This changes the light in which we see things. Our parents are older or have already gone. Friends talk less about achievement and more about the people who matter. Year by year, loss becomes more familiar. Opinions once held tightly begin to loosen. Certainty gives way to wisdom.
And the questions change. When we are young, we ask: What will I do? What will I accomplish? What kind of doctor, teacher, lawyer or leader will I be? What kind of art will you produce? Later, the questions become more intimate: What kind of doctor was I? What kind of teacher? What did I help build? Whom did I encourage? Am I proud of the work I’ve done? These are not questions that fit on a résumé. They are questions about the kind of people we have become.
That distinction feels especially important now. Langston and his classmates are entering a world increasingly shaped by machine learning. They will live alongside technologies that can retrieve information, write prose, analyze data, generate images and perform tasks that once required years of training. They will need to know how to use these tools. And they will need the wisdom to know what is worth doing with them.
As machines become better at answering questions, education must become even more attentive to the questions machines cannot answer: What do we owe one another? What makes a life meaningful? What is worth loving? When should we forgive? What does justice require? How do we live with uncertainty? How do we remain curious without becoming cynical, confident without becoming arrogant and principled without becoming rigid?
This is the kind of learning a university can cultivate. Soulful learning. Learning that enlarges our capacity for wonder, deepens our moral imagination, teaches us to listen and makes us more capable of seeing another person in all their complexity. Learning that reminds us that knowledge without wisdom can be dangerous, and achievement without relationship can leave us empty.
I want to be measured by who I showed up for, who I helped, who I forgave.
That is why I am thinking differently about the advice I gave Langston. In addition to career preparation and academic rigor, I say prepare yourself for a lifetime of joy. Prepare yourself, too, to understand suffering — your own and others. Learn to meet both with courage and tenderness. Have faith in your capacity to forgive, to heal, and, when necessary, to begin again.
Come to university not simply to build a résumé. Come to discover the person you want to be when the résumé is full. We begin by asking what we will accomplish. We end by asking what our accomplishments were for.
When I see Langston on campus, I’ll tell him to build the résumé, certainly. I’ll also tell him to discover what he can do and who he wants to become. Learn things no machine can learn: how to wonder, listen, love and forgive; how to live with uncertainty, and make room in your life for the flourishing of others.
Come discover the person you want to be when the résumé is full.
