Arthur C. Brooks is speaking at Fall Convocation at 3 p.m. Sept. 27 in Alumni Gym. Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery professor of the practice of public and nonprofit leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.
Brooks writes The Atlantic column “How to Build a Life” and has written 13 books including the 2023 #1 New York Times bestseller “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier ” with co-author Oprah Winfrey, and the 2022 #1 New York Times bestseller “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.”
At Harvard, Brooks teaches courses on happiness and finding meaning in life and is going to talk to the Elon community about how they can make the most of their college experience.
“I want to talk to the parents and students today who are just brand new in this community. The students are two months into their college experience, and what they should be thinking about during these critical years,” Brooks said. “You're setting yourself up for a life that can be one that's full of satisfaction, that can be full of enjoyment, that can be full of meaning, but that means you have to know the tricks.
Brooks said in college, it's normal to feel lonely, especially during the first semester of college — and that students should even lean into the feeling.
“If you're lonely when you first get to college, that just means you're a normal person. And the problem with that nobody really tells you that, but it's normal. We feel lonely. We feel lonely when we're not around our people, and we just haven't figured out who our people are yet,” Brooks said. “Almost everybody experiences loneliness when they come and then they look back to that first semester with incredible sentimentality, because what you look back on is what you learned when you were changing.”