The Power of Play

Do you think that playing is just for kids and you are too old to indulge in it? Think again! Yes, play is absolutely crucial for toddlers and preschoolers to learn and develop the social skills they need to succeed, but play can also be amazingly helpful for adults as evidenced by the National Institute for Play in the Encyclopedia of Play Science. Play obviously looks different for young adults than it does for small children, but regardless of how you play, the act of play itself is valuable.

Lego means play well in Danish

My son got a Lego set for his birthday. A really big Lego set – the Taj Mahal architecture set to be specific. With 2022 tiny pieces this was not a project for the faint of heart. Luckily for me, when you buy a Lego set this big, Lego gives you “free” add-on packs. This one came with the 148 piece “fun and funky” pack. While my son sorted his 2000+ pieces, referenced his instruction book and built his extremely detailed and demanding tribute to Islamic architecture, I took a different direction. A more “fun and funky” direction. Let’s call what I did a free build. We both had a lot of fun that afternoon, but ended up with wildly different final products.

Benefits of play

In addition to the different physical end points of our building experiences, we had vastly different mental and emotional experiences. He experienced productivity and mastery. He benefitted from the rigid process of creating exactly the same model the Lego engineers did - it taught him about patterns, spatial relations, architecture, construction, aesthetics and logic.

I, on the other hand, experienced creativity and a lack of limits. Permission to do whatever I wanted to do with no expectations of results with any utility is rare in my adult world. Being fun and funky allowed me to use a different set of skills and a different part of my brain than I usually do. It was refreshing and fun to play.

You spend the great majority of your waking hours working hard at our classes. You spend hours in class, more hours reading and researching, and more hours writing and studying. Hopefully you are learning a lot through these efforts and experiencing the productivity and mastery my son did as he assembled his Taj Mahal. These experiences are a big part of why you are in college and are a crucial part of your education.

You are only human though which means that sometimes you need a break! Breaks with play built into them do so much for you physically, mentally and emotionally.

Mental Rest

Play lets your academic brain rest. We all know that different parts of our brains are responsible for different functions. There are areas which we use for language and others which we use for logic etc. Play requires you to use different parts of your brain than your school work does. Switching up the activities you ask your brain to do helps you to make new connections and be more flexible in your thinking. Letting the academic part of your brain rest for a while is refreshing and rejuvenating. You’ll be so much more productive when you are done playing and ready to tackle your work again.

Get outside the box

Play also helps you to be more flexible in thinking about problems and more comfortable with challenges. When you play, the stakes are low and the consequences of failure are usually insignificant. You can try crazy impossible ideas just to see what happens. If your Jenga tower falls, you can just rebuild it. If you can’t find a place for the puzzle piece, you can put it down and pick up another one. If your Lego masterpiece falls apart, you can construct a whole new model.

When you don’t have to worry about failing, you can try things you normally wouldn’t try. You can push your boundaries and explore your limits. This willingness to try is an important skill which you can practice through play and then transfer to other parts of your life. If you are comfortable with risk in your play, you may be more comfortable with risk in other parts of your life as well and your resilience in the face of challenges will be higher.

Better than coffee

When you are feeling tired and drained, your first instinct might be to go for a hit of caffeine, but have you noticed how much better you feel physically and mentally after you play for a while? Play can be a game of frisbee out on the quad, a board game with friends, a shaving cream fight in the hall of your dorm (this happened when I was in college), an hour spent doodling on a sketch pad, a game of tag – your imagination is the only limit. Play, especially play which gets you laughing or allows you to be silly, reduces stress and releases endorphins. While an hour of studying a really hard subject can fill you with adrenaline and cortisol, an hour of play can do the opposite. When you are full of feel-good endorphins, tackling that next hard assignment is less painful.

Extra credit for playing with friends

Adding a social element to your play is like putting a cherry on top of your sundae. Playing with friends builds stronger relationships. The connections you make through laughing together and working through low pressure challenges forges deeper friendships. Those shared experiences of fun and play will create a strong shared history of positive emotion and memories which you will want to re-live again and again. Social connections have been proven to contribute strongly to our happiness with our lives. Playing with your friends ensures those social connections will remain strong.

The end goal

Play is awesome and has a lot of benefits, but ultimately the goal of most college students is to get a degree and preferably to do so with a high GPA. Your education and grades are obviously a crucial part of your college experience. When you are rested and restored from laughing and stretching yourself through play, you can do better school work. You’ll be better able to handle the stress which goes with being a college student and more resilient to all of the challenges of college life. You are busy (and maybe even overwhelmed) already, but if you can find an hour here or there to fit some play into your schedule, I promise you will be glad you did.