Introduction
Amazing. Fun. Thankful. Time of my life. An opportunity seized. Pivotal. These are the words that come to mind when I reflect on my college experience. From 1978 to 1982, I was making decisions and memories that would last a lifetime. Some aspects of this time period I have wished I could repeat, but for the most part, I am who I am today because of how my college experience has shaped me. In this paper I will share about the factors that most impacted my development during my college years, specifically in the areas of psychosocial, cognitive, and spiritual growth. Then, I will link those stories to the student development in college theories we are discussing in this class. Finally, I will reflect on the positive and negative impact of my college years as it relates to my own development today.
Significant Factors Impacting My Development in College Three things stand out when I think about the factors that impacted my development in college: first, my decisive goal of what I wanted to get from college; second, how personal insecurity can limit opportunities; and third, how I found God.
My goal for college was to get a job…plain and simple. My mother always told me that I would find what I was looking for in college. What she meant was that if I went looking for trouble, I would find trouble. If I looked for fun, I would find fun. If I sat around doing nothing, I would find nothing. She was right. I set out to find fun and life experience in college, and I did. My goal when I started college was to balance fun and gaining work experience with getting good grades. Since I finished my Adventist Academy education with a 4.0 GPA, I decided that I would finish my Adventist College education with a 3.0. Meaning, that I wanted to have a little more fun in college than I did in Academy. My mother also said that I would accomplish what I set my mind to…and she was right. I graduated from Pacific Union College with a 2.99 GPA. So the decision to be prepared to get a job right out of college had a major impact on my entire college experience. This decision led me to getting hired to work on the college newspaper as a reporter and writer by the end of my Freshmen year. From there, I got a job with the yearbook as a photographer, and by my senior year, I was the editor of the college yearbook the year the school celebrated its 100th birthday. I even was given the opportunity my Senior year to be a contract teacher for the college to teach Photo-journalism to the undergraduates in the program. Since my degree choice was Public Relations/Journalism/Communications, I wanted to be gain experience in that area while in college so that I could land a job right after graduation. In addition to my student publication experience, I got a freelance job at the local hospital as a photographer. And to complete my degree, I needed to do two summer internships: one was as a reporter for a community newspaper in my hometown, and the other was in a public relations office at the university where I hoped to get my first job out of college. All I wanted was to have something to put on my resume to show that I would be a good recruit, even as a new college graduate. All of this experience paid off, because I was hired at the university where I did a summer internship within two months of graduating from college. Having a very clear goal when entering college had a major impact on my college experience. It seems that I entered college with a higher level of cognitive development that some of my classmates. I owe my successful 22-year career in Marketing to the focused decision I made about how I wanted “to do” college. Every decision I made had to meet the criteria of “was it fun” and “did it help me gain work experience.” This goal had a major upside: it kept me out of trouble; it kept me focused; I met some great friends in the same profession; I got a job right out of college; however, with this goal came a down-side.
While my professional experience was growing, my social interactions were limited and few. I believe that I had a lower psychosocial development level entering and exiting college than I did my cognitive level of development. Yes, I had friends, but the topics of conversation were “professionally-based.” I could hold my own as it related to conversations about graphic design, marketing, public relations, photography, and writing, but ask me to hold a conversation founded in small talk or personal sharing…forget it! I really had no skills in this area. While most girls were dating and going out, I was either working on the college paper or yearbook, developing pictures in the photography darkroom late into the night to meet a deadline, or studying. You see, I was really insecure with myself. I had a lot of unresolved pain from childhood. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be appreciated. Since I wasn’t really good in the interpersonal area, I strived to excel in the professional arena, even in college. I possessed amazing skills, even in college, to relate to adults and superiors, but I didn’t know how to relate interpersonally. My personal insecurities had a major impact on my college experience, and with that comes bittersweet memories and a lifetime of challenges to overcome.
Combined together, these two elements of my college experience—entering college with a clear professional goal and navigating college with a really low self-image and self-esteem—brought me to the third major factor that impacted my development in college…me finding a personal relationship with God. With a low self-esteem and an impending parental divorce, I moved through college with an underlying theme of anger, self-sufficiency, and lost-ness. I know that God never left me, but I do know that my outward appearance of Godliness wasn’t really true. I had a wall built around me that very few could penetrate. God did. My senior year was a big deal spiritually for me. I actually sincerely responded to the first alter call ever of my life. God was talking to my heart, and when the call was made during week of prayer, I just stood up and walked forward. At that moment, I made another big decision of my life. I was going to follow God, and He was going to help me through my problems. He promised to give me the love, attention, and self-esteem that I was looking for. During college, my spiritual development grew; although my spiritual growth has had peaks and valleys during my life, my strong spiritual development now in my life can be traced back to this key time in college when I heard the voice of God speak to my heart and turn me around in my path.
These three themes are the summary of my college development: a clear, decisive career goal; a damaged heart navigating a lonely world; and a God who intervened to start repairing the damage. College Student Development Theory Chickering talks about the seven vectors of psychosocial development during college: developing competence; managing emotions; moving through autonomy toward interdependence; developing mature interpersonal relationships; establishing identity; developing purpose; and developing integrity. He also discusses seven factors that influence these vectors of development: institutional objectives; institutional size; student-faculty relationships; curriculum; teaching; friendships and student communities; and student development programs and services (Evans, Forney, Guido-DiBrito, 1998). As I reflect on how Chickering’s theory overlays on my college experience, I see now that my experience was quite normal. During my college years, I developed competence in my profession; I further developed ways of managing my emotions; I started the move toward interdependence; I started learning some skills for developing mature relationships; I was working through the process of identity development; I was formulating the purposes I wanted for my life; and I was making decisions on the kind of integrity I wanted to possess. All of that development was going on while attending a Seventh-day Adventist college, that was relatively small compared to public universities; I was also making some wonderful student-faculty and life-long relationships at an institution that held strong religious beliefs and high academic standards. While in the middle of my college experience, I don’t think that I really knew that I was going through a “normal development” process. I think that I thought I was different…and even strange. When I looking at Chickering’s theory, I see that it is no wonder that I felt so insecure and so lacking. The college-age years are pivotal years for adult development. Sometimes I wish I had known the theories of college development while I was going through the college years; I wonder if the knowledge would have helped me be more gentle and compassionate with myself as I was going through those challenging times. Supporting my experience of higher cognitive development over psychosocial development is Buezynski’s theory. Buezynski found an inverse relationship between a student’s level of identity development and cognitive development, in that the more develop a student was cognitively, the less psychosocial development the student has (Evans, Forney, Guido-DiBrito, 1998). My college experience confirms that.
Regarding my spiritual development in college, I can’t help but apply Pargament’s theory. Pargament (Evans, Forney, Guido-DiBrito, 1998) states that religion provides order, reason, and beauty in the world...it also gives meaning to the human experience. Religion also offers protection from the world, pain, guilt, and self-doubt. It also serves as a pathway to the search for self and for self-growth. When I attended Pacific Union College in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I would say that attending a Christian school did help me in my process of my search for self-identity and self-growth. If I were to map a line-chart of my spiritual highs and key moments in my Christian experience, I would definitely make a high mark during my college years. This time period would also included one of my lowest lows...during my early college years my parents divorced and I nearly left the church; and during my last year in college I finally came back to God. I am thankful for the religious framework that gave me some sibilance to order, reason, and beauty of the world. Personal Reflection My own cognitive, psychosocial, and spiritual development today can be traced back to a general theme that has run through my formative years in my home, into my early school years in Christian education, on into my college years, and now as an adult. That theme is a love for knowledge and life-long learning, balanced with a relationship with God and relationships with other people. As I reflect back on my college experience and how I developed during those years, I am grateful for the experiences that I have had, even though those experiences included much joy and much pain. As an adult, I can now look at the emotionally wounded college girl that I was at the time, and see that all that girl wanted was love and acceptance, and the college experience provided a training ground for my developing identity, morality, and spirituality.
Conclusion
In this paper I have talked about the factors that most impacted my development during my college years, specifically in the areas of psychosocial, cognitive, and spiritual growth. I have also linked those stories to the student development in college theories we are discussing in this class. Finally, I have reflected on the positive and negative impact of my college years as it relates to my own development today. I do believe that writing this paper has helped me see that the college experience is really, really hard…but necessary for the healthy development into adulthood. I have also been able to see that what I went through emotionally is quite normal, and that this stage of life is really hard, but necessary. I hope that I can better be of help to the college students with whom I interact at Loma Linda University.