Think about high school, if you dare: Every minute scheduled, someone telling you what to do, even having to ask permission to use the bathroom. Every night there were scheduled events, homework, tasks to complete. Why? To get into college, if you were one of the students on track to compete to get into a selective school. For years, your focus was on ferreting out the secret desires of your teachers, and slyly guessing which activities would make you stand out more than your peers. Always with an eye outward, you did what you’re told. Or else! And now here you are, at long last, at the college of your dreams—or at least one you’ll convince yourself is close enough. The Best Years of Your Life await, right? Think about high school, if you dare: Every minute scheduled, someone telling you what to do, even having to ask permission to use the bathroom. Every night there were scheduled events, homework, tasks to complete. Why? To get into college, if you were one of the students on track to compete to get into a selective school. For years, your focus was on ferreting out the secret desires of your teachers, and slyly guessing which activities would make you stand out more than your peers. Always with an eye outward, you did what you’re told. Or else!
Your parents may have been in on the game too: getting you coached and tutored so you could improve your test scores, driving you all around, checking in on how your teacher liked your last paper, asking how you did on your quiz. And now here you are, at long last, at the college of your dreams—or at least one you’ll convince yourself is close enough. The Best Years of Your Life await, right? Freedom! So few hours in class. So many kids your age. So many activities. So much alcohol. Condoms everywhere reminding you what your classmates are doing. How little classwork can you get away with? Which teachers are the ones you can easily please, to procure that coveted good grade? Which classes can you skip? Which papers can you throw together with a string of quotes in as short a timeframe as possible? As a professor, I understand this (now, after years of struggle), I really do. And yet…This is a profound waste. I understand that tutoring kids is wonderful, and that decorating the dorm gets you points for leadership, and that burning off calories on the treadmill is necessary in preparation for the weekend consumption of high-calorie drinks. I understand the pull of friends and partners, certainly. And yet…there is also the school side of school. And while it has been portrayed everywhere as medicine that must be taken to get well (or finished), I would like to suggest that you can think of it either as an obligation, just like in high school, where the goal is completion as painlessly as possible, or as an opportunity. The choice is yours, now, with consequences you might not have considered. If the school side of school is an obligation, you produce a divided self. You do something meaningless to please someone else. This takes its toll on your sense of purpose and integrity. If, on the other hand, you regard the school side of school as an opportunity, as something that matters to you, then you are in harmony with your activities. You can find a way to write something true, something genuine. You can take a risk, play a little, see what you really think and not just what you think your teacher wants to hear. Sure, there are those intransigent folks who just seek an echo from their students, but most of my colleagues would be delighted to find a student challenging us. For several years, I told my students that all I really wanted was that they CARE about the subject. They don’t even have to do it on my terms. But what does it mean to you? Even chemistry, freshman comp, all those required classes: is there ANYTHING about it that can enrich your life, at all? Can you find any fascination in any of it? Because four years of alienation is a long period of training you to be split from your true self. You could just as easily use the same time to teach yourself to examine your own purposes, needs, desires. Force your teachers to meet these needs. Why do you want to know something? What skills do you want to develop? Why? It is unlikely that you will later as easily find people whose sole purpose is to nurture your incipient abilities. Make them do their job! Regard us as allies—not just arbitrary bestowers-of-grades, but as people who want to help you move along. But the path, the direction, the trajectory are up to you to identify. We have guessed, with our requirements and majors and the like. But if you take charge of this, it will really take no more time than going through the motions. And there is so much more chance that it will matter to you, that you will expand your talents and knowledge and skills. Fill the time YOUR way, even in class. Thumb your nose at the old high school model of following the crowd. It’s time to grow up, and that might even mean taking the school part of school seriously. Paradoxically, that makes it much more fun. October 11, 2011
1 Comment
8/7/2013 12:56:13 am
It all starts with these schedules. They won’t allow you to think with all these carefully designed schedules. Thinking is simply not allowed. You are intended to become workers and they don’t need brains. They need people who can spent their lives without happiness.
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