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Quality of Life?

The other day in my “Environment, health: the real issues” course, we talked about how the perception of what quality of life means is different from person to person. For example, people in industrial cities tend to talk about pollution and green spaces as taking away from or improving, respectively, their quality of life whereas other people may define the economic situation of their country as a more important factor. Regardless, this got me to thinking about what quality of life means to me.

Here is how I ended up ranking some very general factors…

HEALTH : Mind, body, and soul. This seems to be the most important thing. If you are not healthy, how could you enjoy a good quality of life?
ENVIRONMENT : This includes pollution, general hygiene of your place of residence, the amount of green spaces easily accessible, weather…
BREAD-WINNING CAPABILITY : Not having a job and not being supported by others (for us students) adds a huge amount of stress, which would only serve to deteriorate one’s quality of life.
FRIENDS & FAMILY : Human interaction necessary for happiness.
POSSESSIONS : This is last because really, most of the stuff is unnecessary anyways!

Now let’s think about the ~quality of life at Vanderbilt~

HEALTH (*****): Free check-ups at the Student Health Center and meals ranging from vegetarian kosher to vegan to gluten-free to good ol’ burgers and fries and some excellent mac n’ cheese! Plus an excellent Student Recreation Center in case you like to eat more of the latter food groups ;)
ENVIRONMENT (*****): Haven’t you heard? — we live on an arboretum! The pathways are beautifully pebbled on Main Campus and they even scared away the crows that were apparently pooping all over the place. Autumn is my favorite time of year on campus because the colors are absolutely gorgeous! Weather-wise it’s hot, it’s cold, it’s mild — so glad we don’t have to be in Nashville during the summer though.
Autumn on campus! Ooohh ahhhh!
BREAD-WINNING CAPABILITY (****): Student jobs are readily available in all areas of expertise from lab work to making phone calls to Alumni to sitting in the library doing homework until someone actually asks you a question to food service. Vanderbilt’s need-based financial aid is also pretty good.
FRIENDS & FAMILY (****): Yes, we all live together, but this is also a university. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to lock myself in libraries a lot when I’m studying thus very much so avoiding human contact. However, there are plenty of social events every week: club meetings, Birthday days (!!!), intramural sports, and fundraisers, etc…
POSSESSIONS (n/a): That’s pretty relative to whoever is looking at this…