For the first time in American history, we are hearing people rightly question whether a college degree is worth it.

The short answer: It is.

We know that college graduates will earn, on average, about $1 million more over their lifetimes than high school graduates. But the better question is whether a college degree leads to a great life.

That's a longer answer.

The Great Jobs Great Lives Gallup-Purdue Index, released earlier this summer, sought to find answers to these questions by surveying more than 29,000 graduates. The survey assessed grads' well-being by measuring five elements: social support, financial stability, physical health, and senses of purpose and community. Just more than 1 in 10 respondents were thriving in all five areas, while more than 1 in 6 were not thriving in any of those measures.

But the most interesting takeaway from the study reveals the choices students can make that correlate most highly with their chances for later success. It doesn't matter so much where you go to college -- whether it's public or private, highly selective or less so -- or what your major is.

Here's the really killer advice on how to do college, according to Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup's Education division.

These six choices will do the most to boost the odds of a great life after graduation, Busteed says:

1. Take an internship or job to apply what you are learning while in college.

This has to be a job or internship in which the student applies what he or she is learning. Less than a third of all college graduates report having this experience in school.

2. Be extremely involved in an extra-curricular organization.

Being deeply involved in one thing, whether it's athletics or volunteering or a social organization, is better than being lightly involved in many things, Busteed said.

"Don't build a resume of 92 things," he said. Find meaningful, long-term engagement in one of those things. About 20 percent of respondents said they did this.

3. Do a long-term project that takes a semester or more to complete.

"A lot of students run away from courses that involve long-term projects, like a thesis," Busteed said. It's more work. It's harder to do. But having something you work on over a long period of time teaches persistence and grit.

Among graduates, 32 percent said they did this during college.

4. Find a professor who makes you excited about learning.

The great professors are not a secret on campus. Take a class from one of them. Even if they teach a more advanced class or a beginning class outside your major, the benefits of learning from a great teacher extend beyond the subject matter. You're not going to remember all the content you learned in college, but you will remember a great professor.

In the survey, 63 percent said they had one professor like this.

5. Pick professors who care about students as people.

Any chance you have to pick your professors, choose the ones known to care about their students.

In the study, 27 percent of graduates said their professors, generally speaking, cared about them as a person.

6. Seek a mentor who will encourage you to follow your goals and dreams.

This doesn't have to be a formal counselor or faculty member. It could be a coach, a parent, a business professional or an upperclassman. Most young people don't appreciate how important a mentor is for their development, Busteed said.

Among respondents, 22 percent said they had a mentor.

How many in the study hit the nail on the head with all six of these? Just 3 percent.

Those who experienced three or more of these six things doubled their odds of being engaged in their work later, and they were three times as likely to be thriving in Gallup's measures of well-being.

Parents and students can get caught up in the hype and prestige surrounding the college experience. But these six factors may be far more important in achieving the ultimate goal of landing a great job and living a great life.

Busteed added one last piece of advice, documented by research to impact future well-being: Try to graduate with as little student debt as humanly possible.

"In a time of destruction, create something." -- Maxine Hong Kingston

Before bombs started falling on Gaza or a massive ground invasion began, before rockets were launched at Israel, I had invited a handful of close Jewish friends to an iftar, the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during Ramadan.

It was partly in reciprocity for the Seder we shared at their house on Passover, but it was more because these friends mean so much to me. My former editor, Richard Weiss, and his wife, Sally Altman, brought their daughter with them. None of us have ever directly discussed the politics of the Middle East. But we have a relationship forged over years of work and mutual respect.

When I texted them to ask if they would be willing to pray with us for a few minutes, "especially with what's going on in the world right now," I could have guessed their response: "We'd be honored to."

I have felt emotionally paralyzed ever since this escalation began. Even though we are far removed from this crisis, it feels so real, so immediate because of the way we are bombarded with real-time graphic images, videos and stories that shred our hearts.

The New York Times reported that analysts said this latest flare-up has brought a new level of dehumanizing, hateful language to the political, digital and civic discourse. The angry language of annihilation from both sides can be frightening to read and hear.

Almost a decade ago, I overheard a group of older Jewish men at a suburban St. Louis grocery store, loudly agreeing with one another that all Palestinians were less than dogs and needed to be wiped out. At the time, I was rattled and quickly left the store. For years since then, I have chastised myself for not having the courage to say something polite to them, to perhaps challenge the narrative in their minds.

I took away this lesson from that moment: I have a voice within my own family and my own community. Since then, I have defended the Jewish faith and people whenever I hear a disparaging or generalizing remark. I have argued for the right of Israel to exist without being attacked. And, with some Jewish friends, I have tried to share with them the inhumanity of the conditions in the Occupied Territories.

These are not easy conversations. But it can be easy to dehumanize the "other" when we live in silos.

It's easier to retreat to the information enclave that reinforces our own beliefs. It's easier to disengage, to become numb to the violence that happens so far away.

I refuse to raise my children that way.

The challenge is to raise children aware of and interested in the world around them, instilled with a sense of justice and compassion, without becoming inured to violence.

I have had more than a casual interest in this troubled region of the world since I was a teenager. I studied international affairs, specifically the Middle East; lived in Cairo; visited Sinai, Israel and the West Bank. I have talked to Israeli and Palestinian journalists, trying to get a sense of whether this crisis could ever be resolved.

I have searched for hope in this hopeless situation: this deadly intersection of politics, power, economics and religion. In my darkest moments, I wonder if a peaceful, just coexistence is possible.

The horrific largest-scale crimes against humanity in my lifetime -- the genocides of the Bosnians and Rwandans, the slaughter of Syrians and the decades of oppression and killing in the Middle East -- bring up those questions of how people can brutally turn upon innocents: the civilians not engaged in any battle, except the one to survive.

Today's reality includes a live feed of raw, graphic images and videos of war. How do we cope with this onslaught of treacherous information?

It was important for me to pray with my Jewish friends that night. We passed out translations of the opening prayer we say in Arabic. We sat in a circle and spoke from our hearts.

From young child to grandparent, we asked for an end to suffering and injustice in all forms and gave thanks for our blessings.

My editor told a story. His wife shared a Hebrew prayer. My husband shared an Arabic one. Our friends' daughter, an inner-city teacher, prayed for equal educational opportunities for all children. My son asked for an end to wars.

I asked God to heal the brokenness in this world.

Sally came up to me later, as I was getting dinner ready, and hugged me.

In that moment, so connected with someone who may share a different perspective, I felt the strongest flicker of hope.

(Caption for ptb140721.jpg: Toy startup Miss Possible hopes its Marie Curie doll will inspire girls to pursue science.)

The disruption in the pink aisle is about to become an all-out revolution.

A newly minted female engineer and one in the making have developed a successor to last season's groundbreaking GoldieBlox, the engineering kits geared toward girls.

Supriya Hobbs and Janna Eaves, both 21, met through the engineering program at the University of Illinois. They came up with a line of dolls that they hope will change the way girls think about pretend play, and more importantly, about their place in the world.

Their Miss Possible line of dolls combines the appeal of American Girl with the skill development of GoldieBlox.

These young women have left Barbie so far behind.

The first doll will be the childhood version of Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist whose research led to breakthroughs in the understanding of radioactivity. The second in the production line would be Bessie Coleman, the first African-American female aviator and first American to hold an international pilot's license. The third woman they've chosen in their doll lineup is Ada Lovelace, known as the world's first computer programmer.

Each doll will come with a smartphone app with a set of experiments and activities the child can do in the spirit of the doll's namesake. The Marie Curie app will have instructions on making a compass, creating a chemical reaction with Elmer's glue and experimenting with magnetism. It's like a digital science kit using materials typically found in the house. The app also delves into the biography of the woman.

Toys can be powerful tools, letting children imagine a narrative of what's possible in their own lives. But they've become increasingly gendered, pink, superficial and sexualized since today's parents were children.

Would you rather have your daughter imagining she's a princess who finds her Prince Charming or a pioneer who finds a cure for cancer?

"There's something really powerful of having a real person behind it," Hobbs said. "This is one woman. This is the story of her life."

They are seeking crowdfunding for Miss Possible through Indiegogo.com and will let their financial backers pick which real-life female hero to immortalize in doll form after Lovelace. They decided on childhood representations of these women because they wanted the focus to be on their extraordinary accomplishments, not on the depiction of the body.

The founders of GoldieBlox captured our imaginations through viral marketing videos, won airtime during the Super Bowl and raised enough money from donors to begin to take space in the toy aisles away from princesses and put it in the hands of future engineers. Hobbs reached out to GoldieBlox employees, and said they helped mentor this young dynamic duo.

"I was surprised how much they were willing to help us," Hobbs said. "We're all sort of working toward the same thing. That makes it more of a collaboration than a competition."

Miss Possible has a five-person team of college-aged women working on all aspects of their product, from the design to web development and marketing. Hobbs has been working 50 to 60 hours a week on the plans since graduating this summer, even though she already has a job lined up starting next month.

Eaves and Hobbs know their career choices will put them in the minority in their fields, and that's what they are hoping to change. Even though women represent half of all college-educated workers in this country, they made up only 28 percent of science and engineering workers in 2010.

Typical engineers. They spotted a problem and came up with a way to address it.

Hobbs and Eaves researched and found a factory in China to produce their dolls, which they will sell for $45 apiece. The month-long Indiegogo campaign will hopefully help them raise the $75,000 they need to fund the factory's minimum order of 5,000 dolls.

Both of Hobbs parents are chemists, and Eaves' are engineers. The young women never learned to doubt their own abilities in male-dominated STEM fields. They want their dolls to spark that same confidence in the girls who may one day play with them.

"If you look at Marie Curie, you can't say, 'I can't be like that.' You can. Because she was," Hobbs said.