advice-giver: Woodley

moments and those relationships is probably what opened my eyes to the fact that maybe I can have that same impact.”

To his fellow seniors who are stressed about closing this chapter of their lives and embarking on their postgrad journeys, Woodley offers one piece of advice: throw yourself fully into whatever it is you choose to pursue. He posits that most stress comes from a fear of failure, and he says people have two options in that situation: “The first is to handicap yourself and to let yourself do a poor job of whatever that endeavor is. Your other option is risking the failure, and in doing so, offering yourself the chance to succeed,” he says. “If you want to give yourself the opportunity, then go after it with everything that you have.”

I ask Woodley if he has any parting thoughts. He leans back, folding his arms over his chest, and takes a moment to think. Finally, he sits up and tells me about a study that asked people ages six to 90, “What’s the one thing you learned throughout your life?”

“When people looked back upon their experiences, the thing that they remembered most fondly were the instances where they took advantage of the opportunity to help somebody else,” he says. “If the collective experience of people is anything to go off, then that might be a good goal to try to orient yourself towards. When you have the opportunity to help someone else, try to do so.”