Be Good. Be Orange.

Submitted by Madison Miller

Be Driven. Be Orange.

The cost of college; a topic many of us dread. Price has been the focus of education in recent years, with discussions throughout the country about some of the highest tuition prices and debt amounts in the nations history. According to the College Board, the average cost of public college for the 2012-2013 academic year was $22,261. For private colleges, the average cost was $43,289. With tuition continuing to increase, it is scary to think how much an education may cost in 20 years. The issue of college prices is not going to go away. In a society based heavily on achievement and ranking, a college education is arguably expected from our generation. To justify these accumulating tuition bills and seemingly unending debt, our education must be invaluable in comparison. Our classes need to be about more than grades, but about developing drive, the motivation to take positive action in our lives.
At Oregon State University, being orange comes with a sense of pride. We are proud to call ourselves Beavers and be affiliated with the University, but we need more than pride to represent our University. To me, “Being Orange” means to be driven. To be a community of people who are dedicated to work together for a common goal and to create leaders in the community, classroom and beyond. Leaders are people who represent the good, honest way by considering other people in their actions. Leaders act as examples, making other people want to follow in their steps. Our place of education should be dedicated to helping us grow in wisdom so we can become better leaders. Wisdom is being able to apply what one learns through experience and knowledge, and act thoughtfully, rather than impulsively. When a University is committed to helping students not only find their purpose, but also grow and become confident in their abilities to carry it out, then the cost of the education becomes worth the price. An education becomes expensive when it is focused on achieving higher grades not higher wisdom. Education should be more than a letter on a transcript and more than the price we pay. We should be finding purpose through the wisdom we are gaining.
To “be” is to embody or identify with. We embody what it means to be orange; meaning our very lives represent being driven. Being orange is something everyone who is a part of Oregon State (students, staff, faculty, community members) is a part of. We can best represent our University by being a generation who is driven. It does not matter how small or how little recognition one gets from taking action, it is that they are taking action to begin with, demonstrating their desire to be someone who is engaged in the world around them by making a conscious decision to invest their time, money and lives in something they care about. We often associate making a difference with these huge world wide recognized achievements like being a CEO, starting a nonprofit or rising to the top ranks of your occupation. Our University needs to be invested in changing this way of thinking. An emphasis should be on action, not reward. We should work for the advancement of our communities, not advancement of self. What matters is that we are engaged, that we are committed to being a part of something bigger than ourselves. We should all be determined to constantly be moving, growing and thriving in our lives, careers, and relationships. As a society, we have lost the drive to take action in order to help our communities or work places, instead our drive has transformed into the desire to make money. Money is great and we are given the material things in this world to enjoy. But when our purpose is found in money and the possessions we own, we are not living up to our full potential. Every one of us is going to die, and when that time comes, we will lose everything we own. I have a feeling that on our death beds, we won’t be thinking about the money we made or did not make, but how we spent our time, what we did to make a difference.
Our university should be committed to making sure students have goals for their lives and teaching students they are worth more than the number on their paycheck. Part of doing this is helping students figure out what they are passionate about, what drives them. Passion is something we do for joy, something that we are willing to stand behind, fight for and boast about. Helping students to develop skills and an awareness of their interests is where passion begins. If they have the passion they have the ability. Students need to understand and believe they are capable!
Being driven is essential to life beyond the University. Life is not easy and we need to be equipped with the skills to press on when life gets hard. Continuously setting goals for ones self is a huge step in the right direction. As humans we are called to action. Even at the most basic level as babies, it is programmed in us to move. It is because of this need inside of us to take action that we walk. Education is more than taking classes and getting good grades, it’s about learning to takes risks and to go out and participate in ones community. Generation after generation, technology is advancing and it sometimes seems that each generation is getting lazier. But that is not going to be us; we are not going to be by standards, we are going to make things happen!
Being driven is so important for many reasons. It tells employers we will get the job done and are committed to improving the places we work for. It demonstrates a desire in us to be better friends and employers at things like demonstrating listening skills, the ability to see beyond our own opinions and being able work with other people. Drive demonstrates we are determined to make things work and for change to happen when it is needed. Drive is what is keeping alive the desire to cure cancer. Our baccalaureate credits have become something so mundane. They are intended to help us become well rounded students, but are they really accomplishing that? I want to get something out of the time I spend in a classroom. A class doesn’t mean there always needs to be sitting. A class like ethics 205 is more of what we should be seeing in our baccalaureate requirements. Classes where we can engage in meaningful matters like what we want for our lives and the type of people we want to be known as, classes where we are exposed to things going on in the community. In ethics 205, we went outside the classroom to see things like a dance mob and a petition event. Simply leaving the classroom is an example of taking action. We went out and we saw examples of people taking action behind something they were passionate about. What would it be like to have a class where students can go out and be an active member in the community, where they could find ways to be compassionate—to do things for other people out of a genuine desire to help. I think we also need to invest our time in better advising our students early on by giving them more information on majors and what certain careers actually entail. Oregon State needs to be a University that helps mold its students into a body of people that go out in the world and take action. I think most of us want to make a difference, sometimes we just don’t know how. We don’t get told enough that we are capable, and that leaves many of us paralyzed in terms of how we spend our lives. Our University needs to stop this trend. We need to go back and re-teach students that their lives and education are about more than a good grade point average or making money. As students, we need to believe that we can make a difference; that fear of failure is not enough to hold us back from taking action. We need to develop drive. I want us to leave Oregon State with more than a desired career path, but a real desire to take action whether that is in our workplace or our extended communities. How amazing would it be for us to be spread out across the country and even the world as we embody what it means to be people who are driven, who are committed to engaging with the people around them and their communities! For other people to see in our actions what it means to “Be Orange.”