You Have a Lot on Your Plate!

Chickering (1969) lists the variety of things that college students have to do (yes, partying is missing from the list. Interestingly, most students seem to be unaware that “partying” is a relatively recent innovation. It's been fairly well established that anyone who went to college before 1990 is too old to have partied. In fact, no students had ever really partied until your class came along!):

·        Achieve intellectual competence for academic success
·        Develop social and interpersonal competence for relating to others
·        Resolve parent-child authority relationships
·        Learn to manage emotions
·        Adjust to growing sexual impulses
·        Reduce dependency on others
·        Become self-sufficient and goal-directed
·        Learn interdependence and collaborative skills
·        Clarify personal values
·        Solidify sexual identity
·        Select moral and ethical positions for oneself
·        Answer the questions, "Who am I?" and "Where am I going?"
·        Learn tolerance for a wide range of persons, their beliefs and cultures
·        Develop mature interpersonal relationships with peers
·        Establish the capacity for mature intimacy
·        Set appropriate educational and vocational goals
·        Choose one's life work
·        Choose one's life style
·        Decide upon a personally valid set of beliefs
·        Establish congruence between personal values and behavior
·        Learn to tolerate ambiguity in life