I’ve got a bachelor’s degree from Boston University, a master’s, and an incomplete doctorate from a snooty Ivy League school in Pennsylvania. But most of what I learned was from Hardknocks U and the College of Experience. I also took extensive coursework at the University of the Road, Extension School. So much for my jive introduction to the theme.
It was actually in New York’s Greenwich Village that I began an actual intellectual education. I had what is now known as ADD. But in those days, the New York Public Schools found it most convenient to warehouse those who were “problems.” In need of new beginnings, I followed a friend to the Village one evening. I performed with his band at the infamous Purple Onion. That night, I played a mean kazoo and tambourine.
After that, I found my feet wandering to the subway frequently, and from there to MacDougall and Bleecker Streets. One night at the cafe Rienzi, I found myself sitting opposite a retired history professor with a love of the Byzantine Empire. Other nights were spent with college students, writers, and creative people of many types. They introduced me to Nietzsche, Kipling, Cassius Dio, and Henry David Thoreau. These casual acquaintances were not so much an actual education as an introduction that invited me to explore. My time at Cafe Rienzi did what the New York Public Schools had never been able to achieve. It ignited a love of learning and a habitual need to feed it.
When my guitar and I began our wandering in Pius Itinerancy, the bottom of my pack was full of books. Between rides, I visited Canary Row and other interesting locations in literature.
Well Roundedness
Justifiably, our society places much credence on education. I thoroughly agree. But there is a tendency to cage and fence the concept – you need to get a job, you need to make a career. To me, that makes sense as a practical matter, but you shouldn’t cage, fence in, or herd your imagination and creativity while doing that. Let’s introduce the concept of wellness to education. We used to have a term for it. It was a “well-rounded education.”
In a well-rounded education, you studied your major, but were offered samplings from other disciplines to expand your experience, skills, and intellect. There has been a drift away from this. Study X, it will be all that you will ever need. When your knowledge of X is obsolete, or the job market in it is so crowded that you can’t get a job, the employers ask you, “Well, what else do you know?’ If the answer is nothing, you’re shit out of luck.
As a moderately educated person, you know about wellness in diet, exercise, and other areas. You wouldn’t eat only carbs or fats. Why would you do the intellectual equivalent in terms of education?
Dividends
So, regardless of whether you attended any of my old alma maters or not, you can take full advantage of what’s on offer. If you have a particular passion, as I did for anthropology, feel free to follow it, but don’t ignore literature, philosophy, hard sciences, and craft. All those things offer lessons that might not be immediately visible, but offer later dividends.
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I visited Alaska for a summer when I was sixteen. The local kids didn’t believe me when I said I was still in high school, so I decided to pretend to be older for the summer. I quipped, “You got me, I’m a Sophomore at BSU.” In my mind, it was a perfectly natural lie, as many of my friends back home in Idaho had applied to attend Boise State University. But I chose the wrong school to lie about. They, of course, assumed the letters meant something else, and laughed and clapped me on the back. From then on, they believed I actually was still in high school. I only wish I had been as clever as they thought I was, heh heh.
BSU! I almost did grad work there! But Penn offered me a fellowship. I still acquired excellent BS skills.
ha ha ha!! I suspected you might be drawn to that school.
Absolutely!
I believe in liberal education and had to advocate for it over and over during my years teaching college and university writing. My recent foray into Al Jabr has shown me where my learning “disability” held me back from success in a discipline where it really DOES matter that you get the right answer. That answer isn’t everything, but it’s a lot of things — including confirmation that you get it. I did algebra problems for three or four months. Among my challenges was overcoming the voices I heard in my head, left over from school. “You’re not even trying!” “Can’t you see what you did?” (well, no). My career was one thing and thankfully, I loved it, but it was not LIFE. Impossible to explain to bidness majors.
Ahhhh….the bidness majors. You couldn’t explain much to them unless you came armed with a spreadsheet.
My argument was this. “You’re at a dinner meeting with the president of a company with whom you hope to make a merger. You’re sitting next to his wife who runs an art museum. You need to impress her because you KNOW she has influence with her husband. That’s WHY you study liberal arts, you dweeb.” Along those lines… 🤣 That and I was armed with a spreadsheet.
Your aapproach was without flaw!
I think it might have convinced a few. Some of them said, “I’m going to make 3 times what you make. Why should I listen to you?” I just smiled and didn’t say, “Grades, you dumb fuck.”
very beautifull 👌
Like all things in life, a little of this, and a little of that , at sometime will be useful.