If you ever want to know how to make time fly quickly by, I suggest writing a bi-weekly column. Each two weeks flies by and it is again Sunday and time to think of something fascinating to write about for the week. If you ever want to know how to make time go extremely slowly, I suggest becoming the pianist for your dorm mass. The hour-long mass will suddenly stretch to at least two weeks. As I do both of these things, my life is basically a succession of two-week-long masses broken only by frantic searches for column topics.

Column-writing and piano-playing are not actually the only two things I do. I also manage to squeeze in some classes. This has become more stressful as of late due to my little one credit psychology course called "Psychology: Science, Practice and Policy."

Basically this class is about helping us psychology majors figure out what we want to do with our psychology degrees once we have earned them. For me, this seemed like rushing things a little, since I just recently decided that I wanted a psychology degree. I was still congratulating myself on making that decision. I wasn't planning to do any more decision making for a couple more months. But all psych majors have to take this class, so I dutifully signed on. Three weeks in, I am terrified.

So far I have learned two things. First, if I thought getting into college was a lot of work and stress, I was wrong. Apparently getting into grad school is a lot like winning the lottery — the odds are low, and while someone has to win, it's not going to be you. However, worrisome as this is, this is not really what has me so frightened.

The second thing I have learned has corrected another erroneous belief on my part. Prior to going to this class, I thought I was a person. I have recently learned that I am not a person, but that I am a resumé. My whole life will eventually be summed up onto one piece of paper with 12 point font. I am no longer to aim to improve myself as a person, I am to aim to improve myself as a resumé.

This concept bothers me. I am far more than a piece of paper, and I have always felt that the most important part of being good at anything is to be a good person. I am thinking seriously about taking theology as second major, and I truly believe that theology will make me a better therapist by making me a better person in general. But a theology degree won't look that impressive on a psychology resumé.

This resumé idea also raises the question of whether service done for selfish reasons is really service at all. I have often been told that service is important for my resumé. The other day my roommate and I were trying to find a time when I could do a service project, and I said that none of the projects really looked that interesting to me. She asked me why I wanted to do one then, and I said because it would look good on my resumé.

Is that still service? Is something done only in service of selfishness and resumé building still a good deed? Jesus would say no. He would say what he said of the Pharisees, that if you do good works for the praise of men, then that alone shall be your reward.

I guess the real reason this class terrifies me isn't that it makes me worry I won't get into grad school or that I don't know what to do with my degree. It frightens me because it gives me a vision of the sort of person I may have to become in order to do what I want to do.

It raises some very important questions: is what I think I want to do worth becoming nothing more than the sum total of what I can put on my resumé? Which is more important — my resumé or my character? Which is more important — letters of recommendation from my professors, or the letters of recommendation that God puts into each of us in the form of a big heart, a loving disposition and a genuine concern for others?

I know which of these things graduate schools emphasize, and I worry that I too will begin to think that those are the things that are really important. When I finally get to the point where I am trained to help people, will I still be motivated by genuine concern for them or will it all be about the resumé or the money? Because I never want to be that sort of person. I would rather spend the rest of my life working at the dining hall.

Marlayna Soenneker is a sophomore psychology major.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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