Since coming to Cornell, I have been faced with the desire to be perfect: get perfect grades, be accepted to highly-rated clubs, and have a flourishing social life. And yet, in the midst of all this, I was not happy. It is not uncommon for freshman to struggle in college, but for me, it felt different. All my friends loved Cornell and found their places, but I did not. I was not happy, and I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. I held this feeling coming into sophomore year, and it was not until attending the talk about the UThrive book that my viewpoint changed. The thing that stood out to me most was that I need to get comfortable with being good enough. I never wanted to be just average, and I strove for success in everything I did. But at the end of the day, my happiness comes before making myself sick over being perfect. I know that I can do anything I set my mind to, but sometimes it is hard to be positive in such a competitive atmosphere as Cornell University, especially as a pre-med student. Yet, this talk taught me that happiness takes more than simply being successful. Happiness takes duration, strong will power, and self-care. I realized then and there that I was placing more focus on being successful and was neglecting my own being. This book talk was more than a mere talk for me; it was the wake-up call I did not even realize I needed.

Zach Grobe led a discussion on UThrive: How to Succeed in College (and Life) relating the barriers that students place before themselves and how we’ve gone about (un)successfully managing them.  Each of us Rose Scholars in attendance mapped our strategies to those outlined in the book.  Because the book mapped out several approaches to success, our breakout groups were able to focus on these broad categories before we came back into the group where Zach facilitated discussion.

These breakout sessions brought out a consensus in the group that I participated in.  Our group’s theme was willpower.  We approached the theme in several different ways but found common ground on the premise that was also mirrored in the book that spoke to willpower understood in terms of opportunity cost.   We all saw that willpower as a long-term game, that we could only exert so much willpower in a discrete timeframe, that realistically we may not be able to create much success if we had just a short amount of time to work on something.  Instead, our group discussed willpower in terms of realizing that effort over a longer term gave us much more control over the outcomes.  As a group, we discussed how smaller decisions, time management, smaller study time intervals and the like, actually allowed us more discretion and planning.  These smaller intervals seemed to be the bread and butter with how our group managed to feel like we would not get burned out as it were on a task.

Ultimately, our group resonated with Zach Grobe’s overview of the chapter which spoke to the chapter’s strengths because it showed that willpower is actually about the decisions one does not make that allowed continued exertion.  However, what was interesting was the approach of willpower was not lots of exerted, focus effort so much as an approach that allowed progress over time which again spoke to how our group discussed the topic of willpower relative to opportunity cost and long run growth rather than smaller discrete time increments which were not adequate for larger and oftentimes more significant tasks.

A big part of college is learning how to succeed on your own, from structured 8am to 3pm classes, homework and readings usually due daily to choosing your own schedule and deciding how you spend your time. I find myself creating my own problems by leaving work till the due date or falling behind in classes, little things like skimming the reading without understanding it to pass a reading quiz add up over time.

Obviously everyone wants to succeed and everyone wants to have their life together and be highly functional adults, but the reality is very different. It seems like a very toxic cycle: procrastination leads to failures leads to feeling bad about oneself leads to procrastination all over again. I tell myself every semester and every new year that I will be on top of everything and I will stick to my resolution and yet, a week into the semester or a month into the new year and somehow, I am not on top of everything and I’ve already broken my resolution twice.

The pessimistic side of me berates my inability to be the person I want to be and the person I know I could be (with a lot of hard work). During the discussion, Zachery mentioned that anxiety is caring too much, wanting to do well, but that wanting actually gets in the way of doing well. The optimistic side of me recognizes that at least I keep trying to be better. Every time I “fail,” my emotions get in the way of me getting better. We discussed owning our mistakes without internalizing them, being able to learn and improve and not dwell on them. Context matters and failures are not fundamental character flaws, but rather mistakes and setbacks. Being too hard on yourself gets in the way of you being who you want to be. This is obvious, but your mentality matters. I have to remember to be positive and feeling good only helps you succeed.

Everyone talks about success without mentioning the process, the amount of hard work that goes into succeeding. We discussed willpower and where our willpower comes from. For me, my “failures” are a constant reminder of where I don’t want to be. I try to make sure that I don’t end up in a position where I make the same mistakes and feel the same negative emotions. It doesn’t always work out and the negative attitude isn’t one that I want to rely on. Instead, I try to think of it in terms of promises to my future self. Doing my work in a timely fashion means that my future self doesn’t have to go through the stress of doing it last minute. Everything in life can be divided into short term or long term gain. Doing the less pleasant work in the present means investing in my future happiness. I am worth treating myself right and I have to trust myself that I will do the work to set myself up for future success. And that’s where I want my willpower to come from.

Prior to the UThrive discussion held by Zachary Grobe, I had some expectations about general tips that were going to be given on how to better handle the stress that comes with the rigor of academics in college. To be completely honest, I thought that points of the conversation would include establishing healthy sleep and diet routines, in addition to an assortment of other topics such as the importance of organization skills and how to improve one’s study habits. Instead I found myself engrossed in a talk about how to build some of the most important foundations to not only becoming a better student in school, but a better learner when it comes to understanding yourself. There were two things that Zachary made a point about which really stuck. The first was that you need to get comfortable not settling. This small bit of advice made me realize that simply “accepting” is something I’ve recently made a habit of, rather than voicing my opinion and chasing what I truly want. This also tied in with the other point made about willpower, something which needs to be constructed from a place of love and concern for yourself. I’ve been more aware over the past few days the ways in which I need to be decisive and direct. Without this conversation setting that in motion for me, I probably would not have come to the conclusion on just how important this is. I now notice how plenty of problems I’ve faced have been due to my lack of assertion or not having enough determination to do what is best for me. Now I can confidently say that I care about myself enough to want to build upon my willpower in a more productive way, and feel more open to wanting more for myself. I truly felt that this discussion helped me to decide what are the things that I should be paying more attention to, for the sake of my success now, and for my future self.

Often, we prohibit our own happiness just by having the wrong mindset. After attending the UThrivediscussion with Zachary Grobe, I came to the realization that this is exactly what I’ve been doing. Although freshman year at Cornell was a great year, I didn’t have the right mindset which caused me not to enjoy it as much. As stated in UThrive, we should let happiness lead us to success, not vice versa. My mindset has always been, “After this prelim, things will get better.” However, my mindset should be to enjoy the entire process of learning. This year I am definitely going to try to enjoy the process more instead of waiting to enjoy it after.

One other point Zachary brought to my attention was that life is a bunch of decisions. Thus, we can choose to be happy or not. I didn’t realize how simple it was to appreciate things more and control my mood. Zachary mentioned looking at the positives throughout the day to help keep a positive mind. Without even knowing, I’ve been practicing this for the past few weeks at Cornell and I’ve truly been enjoying my time much more. Everything makes sense from the law of attraction. Simply having a positive mindset can lead to a more enjoyable experience while even attracting more positive things to happen.

During the UThrive book read with Zackary Grobe, I initially thought that it would be merely a summary of the book, but we all discussed ideas much deeper than just a summary. We made connections between our lives and the advice given to us through the book. While reading I did make connections to my own life, and how I would adopt these changes in the upcoming school year. However, through the conversation with my peers, I was able to get a different point of view, as well as new changes that I should consider for this year. 

One idea that came up that stuck with me was “You’re good enough; Don’t stress it.” As college students, we are constantly pressuring ourselves and sometimes our criteria are so unrealistic that when we don’t reach it, we are hard on ourselves. Another big point that we discussed was that happiness leads to success. Through our discussion, we talked about individuals that measure their happiness based off of their success, but it is happiness that brings success. Upon reflection of this event, I thought about this phrase and I realized that if you truly enjoy doing something, your work will be the fruit of your success. 

During this meeting, we spoke about building new relationships. As students here, we should be opened to meeting new people and making new friends. We should not limit ourselves to the same group of people we are constantly around. This conversation went further where we spoke about roommate issues. Zachary Grobe mentioned that if you have a roommate, the first thing to do is set boundaries early on and be honest from upfront. Living with someone with no boundaries and no honesty will cause rough living. Based on this, I reflected on my freshman roommate situation, which did not end very well as I moved out into a single. I should have spoken to her about what I am comfortable with and uncomfortable with when I first moved in. This discussion with Zachary Grobe and my peers allowed me to think about new ways to approach different situations.  

This week, I attended the UThrive book discussion. The biggest takeaway I got from the session was to put your happiness before success. As academics start to pick up, I am trying to be less goal-oriented or less focused on the grade outcomes of projects and prelims. Moving away from this rigid mindset, will allow me to enjoy the process of learning and have much less stress. Although grades are important, learning for simply the sake of learning is arguably more valuable. The practice is proven to increase happiness, and from the discussion I learned that a happier person is more likely to do well on an exam. For example, there was a study where one group of people watched a feel-good movie before a test and another group did not. Those that watched the movie received better scores. I have always had the misconception that a higher grade is correlated with a greater amount of time spent on the material. This study shows that working as hard as possible is not always the best option, which I will remember as the year progresses. Instead of revolving around deadlines this semester, I plan to focus on one thing at a time and enjoy the process at each step.

There were many gems dropped at the U Thrive book event, and I walked a way gaining more insight than I thought I would into the skill of maintaining your sanity and happiness in college and, honestly, in life in general. Prior to the larger conversation with the entirety of those in the room, we were split into small groups to discuss specific themes addressed in the book. My group was tasked with talking about will power and how to build it. Someone in the group mentioned how adversity is a way to build your will power as failure can help strengthen it; I agreed with this and found it to be thoughtful. I actually made a similar point in that I felt that we can build our will power by being intentional about doing things to place ourself outside of our comfort zone.

When we had the larger group discussion, however, Zachary highlighted a very different perspective in building will power. He talked about how it is important to be compassionate to yourself. In a practical way, we can build will power by knowing “when” we work the best, “how” we work best, or “where” we work best. Another way he mentioned was instituting tiny changes for 2 weeks, rather than trying to launch into large scale changes. I just found this to be discerning especially because we do find ourselves in an environment where we feel like we need to be incredibly embracing of all challenges in all forms, but that can easily lead to disappointment and actually end up harming your will power more than it builds it. Overall, this display was just one way that the event was beneficial in spreading advice on how to best treat ourselves in the college context, in order to be the most successful we can be.

As indicated in the title of my blog, I found the UThrive book talk to be extremely insightful and rewarding, both academically and emotionally. Primarily, we discussed various aspects of our daily lives that may benefit from further introspection, including but not limited to: character strengths, decision-making and satisfaction, willpower and failure, dealing with disappointment, and healthy relationship building. Overall, it appears as if the driving factor in the construction of a successful mindset with which one can conquer his or her environment is the adoption of a positive, healthy mindset. Priming yourself with a wave of positivity before approaching any potential task or conquest does facilitate more success. Additionally, I was intrigued by our discussion of anxiety and overly ambitious goals getting in the way of success, as it appears as if small changes more effectively construct habits, and it is more beneficial to calmly endeavor to achieve goals. Oftentimes, I find myself generalizing in the context of my difficulties, as if one obstacle indicates my general inability to accomplish a task. However, I learned it is important to recognize and amend personal insufficiencies while seeking to hone in on additional abilities. Personally, I believe I often pursue my intentions in a stressed and overburdened mindset, and it was refreshing to hear that a healthier approach is actually proven to be more effective at rendering success. Thus, I am encouraged to embrace difficulties in a hopeful manner in the future, in order to build upon my strengths and establish new ones.

While our discussion consisted of a myriad of different pieces of advice, I’d like to focus on our conversation about coping with failure in a healthy way for the sake of this post.

It was pointed out that people often respond to failure by being reductive and labelling themselves as a failure. I certainly went to this line of reasoning a few times during my first few months at Cornell. Imposter syndrome is prevalent at Cornell, and I can’t help but wonder if this mentality of “I failed and thus I’m a failure” is largely to blame. Thankfully, over time I began to recognize how self-destructive this was, and I’m at the point now where my go-to response to failure isn’t to attack myself but instead the problems that brought me to failure. A point that was stressed in our discussion is that failure is a result of circumstance, and all too often we’re ignorant of these circumstances. I like this as a general rule for thinking about failure because it encourages one to add some objectivity to situations that often bring with them a lot of emotions, many of them not entirely rational. This kind of analysis doesn’t always provide an excuse for failure, but it can almost always provide a reason for it. A bit of self-reflection can go a long way, and, had I sat down in the past to think about how I could’ve changed my habits and lifestyle to prevent future failure, I can only imagine how many problems I could’ve prevented. Moving forward, I hope to spend some more time addressing failure in this way, be it with a school-related shortcoming or something else. Of course, it’s difficult to exercise such clarity in the heat of the moment, but I think this conversation has given me something that I can look back to.

  During the book seminar my peers and I had the opportunity to discuss the way in which society defines success and implicitly ascribes happiness as its appropriate emotion. An example that was brought up numerous times was one in which a friend had posted that she’d received a promotion at her job. She was instantly flooded with celebratory responses congratulating her. At first glance, this seemed normal , if not necessary, as public validation of achievement ,for some self-doubters, can be healthy and  uplifting. And, even aspire them to reach new levels of success. It was only after hearing the young lady’s answer to a question that was asked, did I realize how these responses can be limiting and the exact opposite of motivating. The question was ,“How do you feel about the promotion?”. One thing to note was how the open-endedness and simplicity of this question had made it a better response than any. The questions allowed the lady to express her true feelings regarding what seemed to be a big step in her life. And surprisingly, she wasn’t all that thrilled about the promotion after all, seeing as it had been something she wasn’t interested in. A major takeaway from this was to acknowledge that by implicitly dictating how others should feel about events within their lives, can make them forego their own better judgement and settle. Even more unfortunate, make these individuals settle for a position in life that they themselves will have to see through, and not those imposing the emotions. All in all, I’m most thankful for engaging in such a discussion because it helped me to have faith in the truth of my feelings regardless of the situation.

As I have just transferred to Cornell, I did not have the opportunity to read the book that was the topic of the talk, UThrive: How To Succeed In College and Life. I was concerned that I would not be able to fully participate in the discussion, however Zach made an easy an open space to discuss the main themes within the book together with our peers. The 5 main themes that we collectively discussed: building character traits, facing adversity, decision making and finding satisfaction, willpower, and building healthy relationships.

Firstly, building characteristics: my overall main take away was that it is important to be self aware of your character strengths as well as those which are not as strong. I personally am aware of my strengths but I often ignore my weaknesses. Instead of working on them, I attempt to overcompensate with my strengths

Secondly, facing adversity: don’t internalize, don’t catastrophize(not sure if that’s a real word, you are not a failure you just faced a bump in the road. I struggle handling failure and adversity so I can honestly tell that these are very helpful for me as general advice.

Thirdly, decision making and finding satisfaction. This one has two parts: making habits, and accept good enough. For making habits, the more habits you make the less difficult decisions you will have to make every day which can take a ton of stress out of life. Zach stated: anything worth doing, is worth doing badly. This really spoke to me, as I tend to have a perfectionist streak and have a very difficult time putting myself out into the world if I don’t think I can do it perfectly. However, I am going to start making small decisions every week in order  to put myself out there even if it isn’t perfect.

This discussion gave me a ton of tips in order for me to be my best and embrace all parts of myself.

In the Rose Scholars book talk we discussed the summer reading book that was assigned last spring and the wisdom and strategies it provided. I learned a lot about overcoming adversary, making decisions, and power. Lots of people struggle with making choices, especially when there are many different options to consider, and how getting into routines can help to reduce the number of choices we have to make. For example, getting into the routine of going to the library every day after dinner can eliminate the decision of how to spend the time between dinner and sleep. Also, just choosing something is better than comparing that thing to all the other options that are available. This conversation really resonated with me because making decisions is something I struggle with, even just choosing which dining hall to eat at every night. I realized that instead of carefully reading all the menus every night and comparing them to decide which has the best options that night, I would save a lot of time by just choosing a dining hall to eat at, and most of the time I would still be able to find something I like. Another concept I connected with was failure and how to deal with it. I learned that anything worth doing is worth doing badly, as power can come in recognizing failure and getting in a position to prevent its reoccurrence. Overall, I learned a lot from the talk and will look to integrate these lessons throughout the semester.