Today’s Opinion section of the Spec features an article about the importance and value of taking risks. Basically, the author owes much of his success here at Columbia to the fact that he’s taken some risks along the way. Taking risks can go very well or it can go very badly – it just depends on what is at stake.
Not to beat a dead horse but… many would argue that the financial crisis right now is happening because of some high-risk activity that went on in the past. In politics: Obama wants voters to take a chance with him and put him in the White House – this is another type of risk language. We hear this word all the time but we don’t really take a step back and consider what type of risk-taking behavior we each engage in.
There is always the risk option and the safe option. Right now, in college, we are in a unique point in our lives where we are pretty much safe from much of the real world. This little college bubble lets us imagine that we are taking risks when we do not-so-risky things. There is some value to this. Sometimes, regardless of the outcome, taking a risk has some value in it of itself. The decision to do it, dealing with the outcome, and being able to do it again even if it didn’t go as planned. College is the perfect time to indulge in this type of behavior. Later in life, it won’t be so easy.