The Humanities Department hosted its Fall Humanities Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 26 in the Driscoll Auditorium.
This semester’s lecture, titled “Hard Launch: Getting Serious About Work, Love, and Play” was co-sponsored by both Villanova Mission and Ministry and Villanova’s Honors Department.
Speakers included Humanities professor and Director of the Honors Department at Villanova, Dr. Anna B. Moreland, and Humanities Department Founder at the Catholic University of America and former Director of Villanova’s Honors Department, Dr. Thomas W. Smith.
The lecture, delivered to a full and enthusiastic room, focused on key takeaways from A Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters, co-authored by Moreland and Smith. During the lecture, Moreland described the book as a “labor of love,” and explained that it was inspired by both the speakers’ experiences teaching and mentoring young adults.
While A Young Adult Playbook explores a variety of building blocks in a young adult’s life, the speakers chose to focus on one of those building blocks in particular: leisure.
Describing specific sources of anxiety that they have seen in their students and mentees, Moreland and Smith dually identified challenges facing this demographic, including the tendency to base our worth on our productivity level.
“I see successful people often trapped in what we call the ‘productivity machine,’” Smith said.
As part of the lecture, the speakers asked the audience to report the amount of time that they spend on their phones each day. More than 80 percent of the audience reported using their phone for more than three hours per day. In response to that statistic, Moreland and Smith proposed a solution: redefining productivity and leisure and reclaiming free time. Addressing the audience, Smith asked, “Are you spending your free time in a way that makes yourself available to everything that life has to offer you?”
The challenges posed in the lecture had a heavy impact on students in the audience, prompting them to think intentionally about how they are choosing to spend their time.
“It really made me think about how I am spending my free time,” sophomore Jamie Duquette said. “So many students are so focused on being productive that they forget about everything else.”
After concluding their remarks, Moreland and Smith then invited three Villanova alumni to reflect on their own experiences of redefining work, play and love.
After the lecture, the floor was open to questions. Many students asked Smith and Moreland for advice on topics such as breaking out of the hustle and bustle of the productivity cycle, dealing with feelings of imposter syndrome and making genuine connections.
Attendees were able to purchase copies of A Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters after the event. The publication is also available for purchase online.
This semester’s Fall Humanities Lecture was a huge success, prompting students to think differently about productivity and leisure through both meaningful and tangible advice and lighthearted yet meaningful reflections.
