So if college is not primarily about either intellectual ideas and issues or classes, then what is college for? Don't students come to college to learn?I came to college to learn, which is to say that I came to college to gain both knowledge and vital life experiences. In only three weeks of attendance at Carnegie Mellon university, I have learned the habits of my teachers and peers, read several wonderful novels, joined Crew, gone kayaking and rock climbing, made friends vastly and vitally different from the ones I had at home, and been invited to parties almost every night, including weekdays. I have gained, for the first time, a sense of direction, and I have lost a vital sense of dread about the world that just seems impossible to maintain given the beautiful (thus far) weather and the shared experience of campus life. Three weeks seems like seven months, given how closely I've bonded with some of the people here, and occasionally, the simplest experience can leave me short winded. I came to college for the classes, yes, but also for the bad food and the good friends, for the disgusting anecdotes and amusing factoids. I came to get out of New Jersey, away from anyone I might know from that other life I lived. And I have learned, I have experienced. Yesterday, for example, I had finished class and grabbed a New York Times whose articles I had planned to make into songs, when I heard beautiful piano music coming from the CFA building. I entered, to see the floor swarming with a huddled, teeming mass of architecture students sketching the first floor hallway, complete with its flaws-included imitations of Greco-Roman statues. I decided to add another layer to the palimpsest of echoes, imitations of imitations of imitations, by walking a floor up and sketching the scene in my own way, a sort of groggy, impressionistic prose:Rebekah Nathan, page 101
The light plays in soft gradients over the four-way-arched ceiling of CFA, illuminating quarter-circles of white plaster. A piano murmurs in the background. Blotches of blue and gray shirts, orange shirts with stick figures and white shirts with red stripes, a mass of architecture students sits sketching headless, amputee imitations of Greek and Roman statues. Every so often, a man in faded blue jeans and an olive-green shirt walks over to a student, stepping carefully around torso-sized clipboards, and relays his judgment: "The lines are too thick," he says down his nose, or "The perspective's off a bit," and then he takes the clipboard and pencil from the student to illustrate his criticisms. An upperclassman, seeing me at the balcony, confides that "those are Cooper's peons." Aren't we all?--Aaron
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ReplyDeleteHonesty I spent this entire read worrying. Worrying if Nathan’s observations define my actions. Worrying when I’ll discover a passion in any academic field or what I truly want to get out of college, hoping this book would help by at least showing me how not to act. And I found that much of what she noted was justified, but although Any U represents the typical college campus, the students she found there do not represent me. There was a resemblance…to an extent, and after that not at all. I do feel the same social and institutional forces she describes: don’t be too friendly with a professor and don’t isolate yourself from your class who’ll help you’ll need throughout the semester. Don’t take excessive pride in doing a reading or hw set a peer hasn’t gotten to, or show off grades where you’re the only one who has excelled. Do complain about the rigor, time spent, unfair policy or whatever, because that’s what we’re allowed to talk about as students. There are more rules and we all partially abide by them whether consciously or not. That’s where the resemblance stops.
So far at Carnegie it doesn’t seem like the professors have had any trouble getting people to speak. I have 2 English and one history course and they are all seminar based. Maybe these 3 professors have done something to get the ball rolling initially to spark our interest, but I come into those classes ready to talk and see how my ideas are evaluated by my peers. Conversations such as “did you do the paper today” and “my roommate was trashed after the party” are as typical here as anywhere. But partying as I have experienced it is a weekend event—the traditional 2 day weekend since most of us have Friday classes. But more often than not I chuckle to myself as I walk around campus at the tidbits of conversation I pick up “ok you multiply by ax^2 and take the integral…” “if you could stop time would photons still travel to your retina or would everything go black?” I find there is ample conversation outside of the Student Cynic register Nathan describes. I haven’t heard a single person complaining, as 50% of the interviews did, that they hate their gen-ed classes. In such a specialized school such courses are a cherished rarity. Cheating is also an issue that must be discussed in degrees. Luckily the student who said (I couldn’t find the exact quote) “if we don’t have to cite sources on tests why do we have to cite them in papers?” seems far away from a culture where as much money goes into buggy as it does the football program (maybe).
Its almost as important to note on a larger scale that college really isn’t about the things you actually learn in class. And it was easy for Nathan to foist this strawman upon me until I remembered the advice of nearly every graduate in the application process: college is about acquiring the skills for future jobs and future learning, not the knowledge you’ll need for that job. So in a sense all of those students who said the things they learned had nothing to do with the real world or their areas of study were right. Imagine the progress any historian, journalist, scientist would make if they only applied the factual notes they took in college to their job. I think I’m trying to say that knowledge alone gets us nowhere and that Nathan missed this point when she accepted and magnified the student’s mantra.
I felt that chapter seven was a welcome departure from the previous chapters of the book. While it was still critical, here is the first time that Nathan actually addresses being a student and gives insight from a student’s perspective. Before now she really had an outside look and seemed to be addressing non-college students. After being repeatedly reminded of my apathy and mistaken values, it was nice to finally get some empathy. At least she can recognize that students have a tough schedule, so socializing before or after class usually isn’t possible, reading isn’t always feasible, registering for interesting courses isn’t always practical.
Eric