“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” — Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society. This is true to my first-year self, who was crazy about getting good grades, and failed to seek the happiness found in everything else that college has to offer.

Like some people, I grew up with a family that valued academics over all else, who gave you a little extra love when you were doing great in your classes, and took it away when you didn’t. As a result, my self-worth became tied to my academic success. There is a difference between trying to always better yourself for yourself, and simply putting too much on your plate until you burn out from attempting to live up to certain expectations. We should all try to do the former, but unfortunately our mindsets have been strange to follow the latter.

For the past week, I have been going around campus asking my friends what they wanted to get out of college. Why were they truly here? As you can imagine, most of the answers I got can be summed up to one word一money. It is obviously a given that everyone who puts themselves through college sees it as a means to an end, that end being making a living in the future. And few went on to say they were truly passionate about what they were studying.

However, we should all try to develop a long-sighted perspective on how we want to shape our lives. Do things with intention, because everything you do now will have a hand in shaping who you turn out to be, whether you like it or not. Take some classes on topics that you’re genuinely interested in learning about, not just passing. Join clubs or work on projects that resonate with you and push you beyond your boundaries. Build a community. Surround yourself with people who challenge and excite you. And most of all, embrace the fact that failure and loss are sometimes inevitable in life.

When Tsinghua University’s new freshmen arrived on campus last August, the first question they were statistics released after the first group of the freshmen enrolled (注册、加入) in the university, more than half of the 540 students came alone. In a letter to freshmen this year, the president of Tsinghua University encouraged them to “start this new adventure by standing on your own two feet.”

To help freshmen grow up, some universities have thought of new methods. At Tsinghua, for example, freshmen need to register and find their dormitory by themselves. The process requires two to three hours, during which volunteers take parents on a tour of the campus.

At Zhejiang University, a banner hanging in the information center says “Parents let go please; let us help your children.” Lu Guodong, dean (学院院长) of undergraduate studies at Zhejiang University, coined the slogan. “The slogan is for parents. Often parents like to do things or make decisions for their children. In their eyes, children never grow up.” said Lu.

A girl arrived at the railway station with all her luggage and looked around for her university’s welcome team. She was Jin Hongting, 19, from Hebei province and would study industry and business administration at Beijing Union University.

When asked why she came alone, Jin said: “There’s no need to bother my parents to come with me. It only takes four hours from my hometown to Beijing.

Sometimes, however, the distance between university and home is so great that many parents are too worried to let their children travel alone. To reassure parents. Renmin University of China introduced a new method. It asked senior students to go back to their hometown and accompany freshmen back to the campus. This helps freshmen get used to living independently.