An Open Letter to My Students

A Proud Word for Critical Thinking: An Open Letter to My Students

Narratives of Life

Welcome, all!  For my students, I urge each of you to take pride in what you do and what you leave behind. More important than anything else, I think, is the joy you get when you finish something "of worth" and what it adds to you as a person. As with this course material, for something to be meaningful you want to bring it into yourself.  Think of what the material can add to your life if you make it your own.

Philosopher Paul Ricoeur often describes our lives as a narrative—a story in which we continually define and redefine who we are. Through this narrative, each of us engages, constantly, in "seeking his or her or its identity." Within the story of our lives, we face turning points that give us the opportunity to change the plot, so to speak.  Critical thinking gives our students another tool to aid them in editing that personal narrative.  They can break free, with courage and dignity, from "the crowd" and define themselves without "arrogance, fear, or hate."  The ability to think critically spills over into the lives we lead, our relationships, and our psychological health.

At the end of the day, we return to our personal narratives.  I issue the challenge that each of my students begins to take the steps to think critically—to engage life with an open mind and to engage life with a full understanding of the risk and personal sacrifice we take upon ourselves in leading a meaningful and rich existence.  Viktor Frankl often quoted the lines, "What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you." Our pain, our failures, and our successes all lead to changes in our story, and critical thinking helps us assign meaning to the changes.  We learn from pain instead of allowing pain to weave us into an increasingly insulated and resentful cocoon.  We mitigate our joys with the realization that such joys need to be savored, for the joys may pass.  We learn that maybe we were not entitled to this or that, but that perhaps we have to earn this or that.

        As you consider the text of your lives, and as you consider the role of critical thinking within that text, I urge each of you to embrace the risk.  Do not just exist—thrive.  To accept the labels that one places upon oneself or that others place is to surrender one's potential, and opens the door to a life lived quietly and unremarkably between the hours of waking in the morning and going to sleep at night.  So, live a life of meaning, take the high road when confronted with different paths, and let the narrative continue!

Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative Volume 1, (trans. Kathleen McLaughlin & David Pellauer), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, (trans. David Pellauer), Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress, 1995. p. 309.

Paul Ricoeur, The Just, (trans. David Pellauer), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 4.

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, (trans. Gordon Allport), New York, Simon & Schuster, 1984,p. 104.