BY NATHANIEL PETERS

In print | October 5, 2006

The pages of this newspaper have seen much written about the misery of Swarthmore. Even if much of our complaining smacks of self-pity and aggrandizement, we can see a good dose of truth in it. Nevertheless, I do not think that the underlying problem is the work itself or the amount thereof. Not all of us may have the best social skills, but most of us can carry on a conversation and joke with our friends. The problem instead lies with the fact that many students begin to question the meaning and purpose of life when they are at Swarthmore. The college and its system of beliefs do not encourage the asking of such questions and, more importantly, they do not provide satisfactory answers. The inability to answer such fundamental questions should lead us to re-examine what we believe and to look for beliefs that can better respond to the critical questions of the human condition.

For many students, the first questions about the meaning of life come in times of hardship. Many come to Swarthmore having been the best of the best, the apple of their teachers’ eyes, the captains and presidents of a panoply of extracurricular clubs, and even the founders of non-profit organizations.

Upon their arrival, students discover that they are no longer the sun shining alone in the scholastic sky. As Dean Larimore put it in his speech to the first-years this year, 90 percent of us were used to being in the top 10 percent of our classes, which means that 80 percent of the incoming class every year has a rude awakening coming to them.

My own rude awakening came in high school when I made a similar jump. My family moved during my ninth grade year, and in August I found myself at a new institution. Suddenly I was no longer the smartest guy in the room; in fact I was far from it. My old collection of friends was gone, and I found myself the only newcomer in a class of 40-odd boys who already formed a complete social unit. For the first time in my life, I was not perfect in school. I did not enjoy what I was doing or where I was, and that discomfort made me question for the first time why I was doing it. If school was a game to be played for my pleasure, why continue playing it when that pleasure disappeared? I came to the conclusion that unless there was a better reason for my work than my own satisfaction or my own glory, it was all meaningless and not worth my time.

Many students have similar troubles when they arrive at Swarthmore. In general, the student-based and administrative support structure can solve problems involving alcohol, poor grades, or a bad roommate. Nevertheless, Swarthmore cannot solve the problem of a student questioning whether his life or her academic studies have any meaning. In his address to the senior class last fall, Bob Gross (may he live forever) addressed this point blank. A student had once asked him: “What’s it all for, Bob? You work hard in high school to get into a good college. You work hard in college to get a good job. You work hard at your job to support your family. And then you’re dead. What’s it all for?” Our venerable former dean gave the senior class his answer: “After brooding about [the] question for the past 20 years, I am very sorry to report that I’m not entirely sure what it’s all for.” His speech, like the college as an institution, provided good nuggets of advice on how to live but ignored why to live. Instead of challenging our beliefs when they do not provide us with the answers to life’s ultimate questions, we as a community have gone on believing what we believed in the first place and decided to ignore the questions that our worldview cannot answer.

Since we do not challenge ourselves to find the meaning of life, many of us are left trying to give our lives purpose by our own power. I know that when I tried to do that earlier in life, it failed. I could not concoct a sufficient meaning for myself. I came to the conclusion that meaning must come from someone higher than me, from a source greater than humanity.

Once again, I find that the Pope puts it best: “No one can pull himself out of the bog of uncertainty, or not being able to live, by his own exertions; nor can we pull ourselves up, as Descartes still thought we could, by a cogito ergo sum, by a series of intellectual deductions. Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”

With no higher power or source from which to receive meaning, we are left with no purpose, with a life of emptiness in which “there is nothing new under the sun.” Former Harvard president Derek Bok replied to Billy Graham’s question, “What is the biggest problem among today’s students?” with one word: “Emptiness.” The same could be said for the students at this institution. Much of the Swarthmore malaise comes from a hunger for purpose, from students starving for a meaning to their existence. Unless we as an institution challenge our beliefs to find such a meaning and become willing to abandon them when they fail to provide one, we will continue to move along through life without a good reason to live.

Nathaniel is a senior. You can reach him at npeters1@swarthmore.edu.

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