This is lacking around 3,000 words but guess who's too gosh darn lazy to make the necessary additions? At any rate, there were simply too many ideas to fit into a small newspaper article (I was budgeted at around 1,000 words). Main points to discuss: we're lazy, we're idiots, the way we approach our own education is a joke, I am nostalgia, I am excited, I like using words that make me sound tall (PAUL BUNYAN Y'ALL!)
It’s that feeling that overwhelms us whenever we walk into a library, or flip through the course bulletin: I know absolutely nothing. Oh sure, we think we know something about this and that, but in reality, we are entirely blank. Take me for example, I’ve read some good books in my day, had some intellectual conversations over intellectual food, traveled a bit, and generally speaking watched, listened, and learned myself into a false sense of academic security. Why, I’m even taking five whole classes this semester! That’s one entire class more than I’m expected to take!
But the sad truth of the matter is that despite four years of college, countless papers, and numerous trips to the library, I still have a very small grasp on the total available knowledge out there. Which brings us back to the course bulletin. We’ve all flipped through it while making the tough choice that we must make at the start of every semester: what will I learn? Nay, what will I choose to learn? What subjects will I spend my days and nights pondering? In some cases the choice is clear, either because of a predetermined track or simply because of major/minor requirements. But then there are the one or two other courses that are open to almost any school in the university.
These are delicate matters, for if we choose the correct course(s) we are allowed to bask in the florescent lighting that is academia at its best. Choose incorrectly, and you end up either kicking yourself, or worse missing out on a fraction of your $40,000 tuition. Tread carefully indeed.
Which brings us again back to the course bulletin. As a graduating senior, I am filled with equal parts euphoria and anxiety, nostalgia and regret. Of all the odds and ends running through me at this point in my college career, and indeed my life, regret is the one that smarts the most, for we can do nothing to alleviate feelings of regret except forget that which pains us…sort of. In this case, I regret not learning everything that I haven’t learned in four years of higher education and the thought that I would graduate without at least getting some idea of what I was missing out on just didn’t mesh. So, I decided to schedule one day in my week, a Monday, and take as many classes here at BU as I possibly could. Moreover, I wanted to expand my definition of what I call Boston University, as there remain countless students, teachers, buildings, and hallways that I will never know. Call it a desperate student’s academic mid-life crisis, paid for by your undergraduate student fee.
I began my day at 8AM in the serious hallways of CFA. En route, I pat myself on the back for being awake, fully dressed, and out on the street by 7:30. My self-congratulatory behavior ends when I see scores of other students who are way ahead of me, coming back from ROTC physical training, heading to team practice or--gasp!--work. Upon entering the ivy saturated building, I am greeted by a sculpture of a cowgirl’s head, and I realize that this is my first time setting foot inside a building I walk past nearly every day. A moment or two later I realize something else: that I like being in CFA. For starters, it’s quiet, and when the quiet is finally broken up, it’s usually by a cello or a grand piano. It’s a good kind of cacophony. I sit in on an ear sight training course wherein students, at 8AM mind you, are asked to sing, conduct, identify, and tear apart music to its bare bones before building it back up again into something coherent to the rest of us. The class is taught by an encouraging, Jesus-y looking fellow named Jason who mans the piano in the room.
To begin the class, Jason plays a chord and asks students to identify things unknown to me such as “major 6th” or the “perfect 4 up.” It is alien and fascinating. It also sounds pretty. The students here are a serious lot, scrunching and furrowing their brows as they attempt to dissect what to the rest of us sounds just like any other piece of music. But they are not the rest of us, I would soon learn, they are assassins, picking out single notes and instruments from 300 yards away without even using a scope. Upon each correct answer, they simply shrug and go back to studying the notation before them.
My next class is organic chemistry, and it is in the science building. I reluctantly tear myself away from the sirens and stumble back out into the morning light. As I walk across campus at this still early hour, I think how different walking down Comm. Ave. feels. We tend to ignore the many phenomena that make up our campus life. It is only when the familiar becomes slightly unrecognizable that we actually pay attention to our lives.
I arrive at orgo a few minutes early and grab a seat; another new building, another new classroom, another new set of faces. There are a few glances in my direction that seem to say, “Who are you and what cruel act of fate brought you to this place?” I have been told by many that orgo is not something you enjoy, or even learn, but rather, something that is to be endured. Lucky for me, I have the luxury of not having to pay attention in class, and I can instead watch the students and enjoy the show put on by the very lively professor. He’s a cross between Latin pop star Marc Anthony and a younger version of Don Quixote, all hopped up on Miami sun. He poses himself at odd angles while posing questions to the class and answers his rhetorical questions with answers such as “Heck yes!” and “Good heavens no!” I am loving it and for a moment I even consider switching majors. The students around me seem to be in pain, but I can’t get enough of the funny little shapes being drawn on the board. Class flies by and I walk way having learned nothing except that elimination decarboxylation is awesome. So is Professor Quixote. I should do this every Monday.
The rest of the day goes on as such: at 10AM I head over to physical biochemistry but am informed that the class will be having an exam that day. Rats. So I head upstairs in CAS to the Geddes Language library (a fine resource, along with the beloved Krasker) and make close with a German language audiotape. Despite my forty minutes of German lessons, as of this writing I am not fluent in German. At 11 I sit in on an Earth Science course with the exuberant Professor Baxter. We learn about fault lines, meteorite impacts, and the Triassic up to the Cenozoic periods. Students discuss controversial theories that are causing a stir in the world of geology. I envision a life where I probe and study the history of the rock called Earth. I probably wear a vest of some sort and most certainly carry a knife. I am respected and feared by contemporaries. The students are also pretty darn keen.
At noon I visit the School of Theology and sit in on a Marx discussion. The philosophy students talk a lot, saying very little, in the same way that English students are prone to ramble on about the way scene 3, Act 4 of King Lear reminds them of something else that makes them feel this way before another student argues that, no, it makes them feel that way. Philosophy students are a pretty hep group when it comes down to it.
I make my escape and venture into Greek/Roman mythology. Another misfire as I learn that the class will be watching a video in class today. It’s essentially a tourism film set around the long, ancient walk taken by ancient Greeks every Easter. It’s interesting enough. I catch something about a pomegranate seed and someone’s daughter named Persephone. I remind myself that I must remember to read up on these things some day. The narrator walks a lot and reads passages from Socrates and Aristotle. He also complains that there are too many cars in Greece. He looks lonely.
From there it’s a string of Morphogenesis, Food and Culture (the only class of the day that I am actually enrolled in), a class on Eastern Religion (Japanese Shintoism and the like), and finally a class on Guerilla Warfare with a wildly amusing Frenchman, Professor Maitre.
It is a long, long day, nearly 10 hours of class straight. I walk several miles (no problem for a marathon athlete such as myself), see lots of new faces, walk around in some new buildings, and even pick up a thing or two. But most importantly I learn that the way we as students of higher education approach learning is an absolute joke. This applies for TV students as much as it does Econ students or Art History disciples. We rope ourselves into narrowly defined academic pathways, both in the literal sense (our physical routes) and the figurative one (the small portion of knowledge we choose to focus on). In short, we all should be seeking out new pathways and shame on us if we fall into any kind of routine for too long.
In the end, one overwhelming theme comes up repeatedly: we cannot learn everything, and to do so would be stupid. Instead, we need to constantly feed our sense of curiosity and always pursue “why?” with another series of questions. In doing so, we are exposed to unknown corridors, and become Renaissance men (or women) in our own right, confident that at the end of the day, we can settle into our beds and say to ourselves with conviction: I know absolutely nothing.
