EDITORIAL: Jane Goodall demonstrates the importance of passion
World-renowned primatologist, anthropologist and conservationist Jane Goodall will speak about her life's work on campus tonight in McGuirk Arena as part of the Speaker Series, but the manner in which she has lived is as important and instructive to students as any research she performed.
This Editorial Board applauds the decision to bring Goodall to campus, for she serves as an example many students should look to when deciding how to proceed with their lives, beyond choosing what to major in during their college years.
Goodall did not choose a career with guaranteed employment. She did not set off for Kenya, and later Tanzania, because opportunities in a currently en vogue field awaited her there. She didn’t make the mistake so many students do; attending nursing school simply because jobs were available, or studying finance because of a culture that glorifies above all else the supposed security of a suburban home with a three-car garage.
Goodall found her passion early in life, and rather than abandoning it in the interest of "safety," she became an example encouraging others to follow and shed light on her inspiration. Most of us can only hope to exert a fraction of the enthusiasm she did while achieving her goals.
Unlike many, Goodall was not fueled in her career by the incentive of a big paycheck or receiving attention. Those things are earned, along with respect, when it’s clear someone has dedicated their life to something they were wholly invested in.
Students are facing a daunting job market, but the economy has been awful before; years squandered pursuing someone else's dream can never be recovered.
Goodall is not only an educational speaker, of a caliber our campus is fortunate to have — though not as often as we may like — but she is also a sterling example of the degree to which a life lived passionately can be a life lived well.
There are people who do indeed dream of being radiologists, who find the field fascinating. The same is true of some derivatives traders and mechanical engineers.
But too many students have been bludgeoned by their own fear and a society that values instant employment over passion, especially a passion for knowledge, into never taking the risks that could let them live the life they truly want.
Goodall's extraordinary life and legacy came at the expense of not always being sure, of not always being safe, but her passion has left her with something much more than a pension.
