The world is crazy right now. And it’s scary to be thinking about going to campus and preparing for college with everything going on. So the question for you as parents, is how the hell am I supposed to think about my kid’s college prep, when I may not even be sure what college will look like when they get there. It’s a totally valid concern. The old methods aren’t working.
A mensch works with this core principle:
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
But if I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
At its core, this speaks about balance. Our attitude and focus should bounce between a focus on ourselves, and on others around us. What is my role in becoming a better person? What is my role in making the world a better place? We must balance what we do for ourselves, with what we do for others. We should be leaders and followers, students and teachers. We should know and act on our privileges and our disadvantages.
From this, we can learn several things.
It is important to prioritize ourselves. We must focus on our own well being - physically, mentally, spiritually. We are in charge of the skills, behaviors, and other aspects of our life. We are ultimately in full control of our own lives, and should not let anyone other than ourselves prioritize this. We must be strong, severe, intense.
But we must also prioritize others and the world around us. We are obligated to work towards fixing the broken pieces of the world. To continuing the work of making the world a better place. To social justice. But we must also be filled with kindness, agapic, love, and joy.
In today’s world of absolute identity, these are seemingly contradictory statements. But holding two contradictory truths and knowing they are both true is more crucial than ever if we are to survive and fulfill our purpose in this world. But with how crazy college is today, how do you prepare yourself to be both for yourself and for others?
You must invest in yourself. You must be strong and capable with a self-focused foundation. We do this by investing in ourselves and others.
You must exist in the middle - you cannot be only one thing. For this is how we succeed and fulfill our purpose in life.
It is important today more than ever to make sure your child is ready for the real world by ensuring that they have a strong, capable foundation for themselves. And the simultaneous ability to consider others in their own conditions.
But the most important part of the Mensch Mindset, is “if not now, when?”. From this we learn the importance of getting things done. We must have space to do things when they need to be done, to learn how to prioritize, to properly schedule, to build daily habits. From this we learn, that we should do things in their proper time. Because change (both internal and external) takes time. We can’t change or build habits overnight. It’s a slow grind day after day for a long period of time.
So that’s what we do at BA Mensch. We have a course for students AND PARENTS designed to take you from the end of middle school through the college application process. With separate lessons for students and parents, we’ve created a series you can use to implement a Mensch Mindset over a long period of time, that leads not only to admissions success, but more importantly, a highly functioning, capable and successful person.
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