Born to Party, Willing to Work?
Columbia Professor Takes a Closer Look at the Regrets of College Students
While their most well known collaboration undoubtedly remains the United States’ Declaration of Independence, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson also actively opposed procrastination, and their proverb “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” continues to resonate today.
Parents endeavor to prevent their children from putting off chores, as educators insist that students not delay their homework, and as corporate executives repeatedly encourage employees to complete tasks ahead of time: everyone is trying to get things done, and the secret of getting ahead is getting started.
“Hyperopia” has long been a synonym for a defect of vision, colloquially known as farsightedness. But this past year, the term took on another dimension when Columbia Business School professor Ran Kivetz first used it metaphorically to mean “excessive farsightedness.” As part of his research on economic consumer models at the Columbia Business School Behavioral Research Lab, Kivetz and doctoral candidate Anat Keinan recently published a study in the Journal of Consumer Research examining the “regrets of college students regarding their behavior during a past winter break.”
More specifically, Kivetz asked 69 Columbia students whether they were happy or regretful about having spent more time working or enjoying themselves during their winter break. The answers in favor of working versus partying were just about equally distributed. However, when Kivetz interviewed 24 alumni at their 40-year reunion event, those who missed out on the social events during their undergraduate years regretted it, and those who indulged look back on the fun with ease and satisfaction. According to Kivetz, “supposedly farsighted—’hyperopic’—choices of virtue over vice evoke increasing regret over time.”
But who says that working equals virtue and partying equals vice? If there’s one thing we’re taught at Columbia, it is to question. So let’s take a look at what some of our inquisitive alumni might have to answer.
Reflecting on his time at Columbia, John Weaver, CC ‘49, an English and psychology major who subsequently went into producing and directing commercials, finds the virtue versus vice dichotomy highly inappropriate: “placing ‘work’ and ‘partying’ at the opposite ends of any attempt at evaluating the College experience seems myopic—to maintain a continuum of the optic metaphor—and of little value.” For Weaver, it is clear that there is more to Columbia than just a lot of papers or parties.
Stuart Berkman, CC ‘66, expresses a similar concern for the work versus party polarity. Berkman, who worked at the Coca-Cola Company for almost 30 years, considers himself “to have been neither ‘hard-working’ nor a ‘party-goer’. There are many other alternative pursuits in which Columbia students may have engaged, such as campus extracurricular activities, paid employment, cultural endeavors, or simply ‘majoring’ in New York!”
Columbia prides itself in offering more than merely a rigorous academic program or a great environment for festivities. The University’s 2005 brochure introduces New York’s acropolis by stating that “now, more than ever, Columbia University in the City of New York is a place where ‘the best of all worlds’ is everyday life.” And the best of everyday life emerges by striking a healthy medium between hyperopia and myopia, looking out for the future and at the same time, enjoying the present.
Life at Columbia is about the interactions you have with fellow students, floor mates, professors and staff, day by day. Leah Germer, CC ‘09, recognizes that “going out—concerts, food, friends, New York—in general is tough to balance against the workload,” but not impossible. Because in the long-run, the quality time spent with friends will leave you with memories that no chapter of the Iliad can replace.
Ultimately, the way in which you choose to spend your time is, of course, up to you. While some may choose to follow in the proverbial footsteps of Franklin and Jefferson, the lovers of procrastination will agree with Mark Twain and “Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow.”
Photos by Daniella Zalcman