Wisdom Wednesday: Letters to Future Scholars – Surpassing Yourself Means…

Submitted by Vince M.

Surpassing yourself means performing something better than you expected, and achieving beyond an established goal. When attempting to surpass yourself, you shouldn’t leave everything to chance because this makes everything you do unpredictable, and you may end up not even achieving your goal. This is why people should always be trying to improve themselves, and especially in areas they find weaknesses. A goal is motivation, but it is also a limitation. To surpass yourself, and your goal, you should do things to the best of your ability, not to simply satisfy your goal. This is because once a goal is reached, people often slack off. Personally this means that goals aren’t necessarily an end game, but steps on a ladder. Once a goal is completed, it’s not like it’s your final goal. There will be more goals in life, and you can essentially pursue them infinitely so you aren’t left idle. 

Collaboration in work is so important because people think differently and when the thoughts of others are combined, it creates a more coherent work. Collaboration requires one to value brainstorming, problem solving and efficiency. As a group of people, all working towards a common goal, the tasks required can be distributed to several members and overall reduces the time consumed in order to complete a project. 

In college, we are required to take general education classes that aren’t necessarily related to our majors. These are important because college exists for people to learn, not to just earn their degree. GE courses help people develop as a person, as well as skills such as critical thinking and time management. Writing courses help in essay making or overall writing techniques, and communication is something that is used daily. Even foreign language courses help us connect to different cultures. It’s important for people to have diversity of knowledge in addition to specializing in one topic. Don’t be discouraged by having to take GE courses, and instead, see them as essential or as opportunities.