The Brown & White

Go cave diving with great white sharks. Fly a fighter jet. See all seven wonders of the world. Live in Paris for a year. Be a father.

What do all these adventures have in common? They are all part of different bucket lists.

And what is a bucket list? It's a long list of goals that a person wants to accomplish during his or her lifetime.

Movies like "The Bucket List" or MTV's new show, "The Buried Life," portray people trying to check off goals on their bucket lists, while also helping others.

In "The Buried Life," four young men from Canada have a list of 100 things they want to do before they die. In every episode, they attempt to check off one goal, while also helping other people they meet along the way accomplish some of their dreams. At the end of each episode the men ask, "What do you want to do before you die?"

On the next episode, which airs Monday night at 10 p.m., the men try to play basketball with President Barack Obama.

The men have a Web site and a blog of their adventures at theburiedlife.com. The Web site features their whole list with goals like paragliding, camping at the Playboy Mansion and making a toast at a stranger's wedding. The list not only includes egocentric goals, but it also features goals like paying for someone's groceries, giving a stranger a $100 bill and making a big donation to charity.

A number of Lehigh students were asked this daunting question, and the idea of doing something philanthropic for other people was a common answer.

Jill Ireland, '11, wants to help someone in a way that they couldn't help themselves. She said doing something philanthropic created the greatest connection between two people.

"When you help someone, both you and the other person are benefited," she said. "If you help someone with something they could probably do themselves, it's not a big change, and it's not going to have that great of an effect on both people."

Lehigh professor Ziad Munson said if someone is really passionate about a goal, it shouldn't just be something on a bucket list, but should encompass his or her life.

He also said that goals set in bucket lists can sometimes lead people to join social movements, where the focus of the group is not trying to accomplish the items on a bucket list. Instead, the group members become so involved in performing those actions that they no longer feel the excitement of crossing goals off of their bucket lists.

Munson said people who are involved in certain social movements, like the women's movement for example, are willing to completely devote themselves to the cause.

"Find something that moves you enough for you to abandon your bucket list," he said.

Seniors at Lehigh often make house bucket lists. They write down goals they want to accomplish together before they graduate that are usually about going to places in Bethlehem together or doing something that can only be done while at Lehigh.

Seniors Kaitlin Drexler, Grace Hebbel, Jackie Hofman, Holly Kennedy and Leigh Mignogna made one of those lists together. Drexler said they have not crossed off many items on their list, but the best part of the list was making it anyway.

"We thought it would be something fun that would bond us as a house," she said. "It's a last-chance effort to do all the things we wanted to during our four years at Lehigh that we haven't done yet."

Some of their goals include going to the Bethlehem Star, going to Philadelphia or New York City together and going to the rope swing along the Lehigh River. One thing the women have checked off is "the pub crawl" between the South Side's bars.

According to Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology specializing in goal pursuit at New York University, many of the goals people set for themselves are only made if the goal setter can assume a high chance of success. She also said that negative ideas about something in the future can lead to avoidance of goals.

In her book, "Self Regulation of Goal Setting: Turning Free Fantasies About the Future Into Binding Goals," with co-authors Hyeon-ju Pak and Karoline Schnetter, Oettingen describes her fantasy realization theory. She says there are three routes of goal setting people use to address their future fantasies. The first are future fantasies with the aspects of the present circumstance that challenge the desired future. In this scenario, commitment to goals is only high if the expectation of success is high.

Oettingen's second route of goal setting is positive future fantasizing. She said in this route, "people will try too hard when expectations are low and will not try hard enough when expectations are high." Her reasoning for the goal setter's mindset is that he or she has not taken the present circumstance and the challenges it presents into account.

The third route is opposite from the second in that goal setters reflect negatively about their present situation. In the end, the goal setter will either try too hard or not hard enough.

"Fantasy realization theory assumes that for a necessity to act to occur, the discrepant cognitive elements of the desired future and the respective negative reality do not have to be only noticed, but they need to be explicitly elaborated," Oettingen described in her book.

Lehigh professor Christopher Burke said Oettingen's research also found that many people only see the desired goal rather than all the obstacles in attaining that goal, and that when a problem came about, those goals were often derailed.

Whether your goals are fantasies or realistic, there are always ways to accomplish them. And as we have seen on "The Buried Life," bucket lists do not have to stay ideas on a page. They can come to life, and in turn, change your life.

So, what do you want to do before you die?

We asked, you answered. Lehigh students reveal what they want to do before they die:

Learn to play an instrument and sing at the same time! That be pretty sweet. Greg Anderson '10

I want to adopt a child. Izzy Breit '12

Work with Doctors without Boarders. Samantha Yeong '11

To visit every country of my ethnicities (5). Kara Gustafson '10

I want to see all seven wonders of the world. Ashley Libutti'12

To learn to fly an airplane. Adrienne Lafleur '12

Marry a blonde. Robert Li '11

I want to go skinny dipping. Becky Osborne '13

I want to learn how to hang glide. David Tench '13

Run through the Alumni Fountains. Kristen Ott '12

Go to the Bethlehem Star. Grace Hebbel '10

Live in Paris for a year. Simona Itskovich '11

Cage Dive with great white sharks. Molly Castles '12

Jump off the top of a waterfall. Luis Bazarto '10

Meet another person named Corielle and write a novel. Corielle Heath '11

Go to a Lehigh sporting event other than Lehigh-Lafayette. Tracy Sartorius '10

Play Golf on the moon with Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter and Tracy Morgan. Brian Weekes '11

Perform at a massive concert. Tim Buirkle '10

Go to Africa. Jill Fromison '12

Discover something new about neuroscience. Brittany Wiesen '12

Go to Italy. Lauren Gordon '12

Fly in a fighter jet. Tommy McNulty '11

Help someone who truly needs it in a way they couldn't help themselves. Jill Ireland '11

I want to go sand surfing and go to space. Blair Piendak '11

I would like to learn how to sing…outside of the shower. Katrina Iobst '10

Do the Polar Bear Swim. Erica Segal '13

Make the Dean's List. Alyssa Conahan '13

Take a Safari in Africa and hunt or kill a non-endangered species of elephant. Jaren Walker '11

Travel to all seven continents. Marc Mechanic '12

Fight banditos in South America. Rick Giles '11

Go skydiving. Victoria Shiebler '12

Base jump off a cliff. Jay Campbell '11

Attend a World Cup final game. Matt Boncelet '11

Swim with dolphins. Kaitlin Drexler '10

Go scuba diving. Ryan Wall '11

Fly a plane. Adam Kirell '10

Bungee Jump in New Zealand. Katie Moulton '11

Find true uninhibited love and get married. Athena Sinha '11

Explore the world and live abroad in either Asia or Europe. Aaron Gray '10

Learn to surf. Kevin Forsberg '11

Be a father. Rich Paul '10