Coming from a middle class background and a 2nd world country I was lucky enough to attend college back in Costa Rica and later graduate school in the US. I must admit that college was a mix of binging, procastination and ultimately somewhat enlightment. Graduate School was a much better test of character and interest and dare I say implementation.
When I met my wife April I was amazed at the fact that she could take pretty much any course she wanted when she went to Cornell for college - how cool could that be? I had a rigid coursework where the only electives were gym class. I met my nemesis in a string of calculus and chemistry courses at the core of my curricullum, this combined with the haze of youth was enough to delay me well into my twenties for graduation. But we had some fun times!
In a presentation I gave to students at UVM a few years ago I underlined the importance of understanding what the role of a university (and of a student) is. As a young student I was more concerned about reaching out to other people - however clumsily in many cases - than to read my textbooks. Then I realized that "all this reaching out but such little things to share". I am still amazed at the variety of interesting people that exist if only we had the time to share what we know or intuit, but I am even more amazed that after all the talking that is done so little is actually implemented. bla bla bla blaaaaaaaaaaa and then what?
Could it be that we live in the midst of an unspoken duality between what is happening and what we are doing? For example I rember back in the early 90's while outside Bush senior was sending troops to the Persian Gulf we were inside running eternal calculus drills in prepation for the final exam. During the break we would all go and tune into our radios to get the latest news while inside we were solving equations. There is a time for everything, but what is it time for now? right now? where is my attention right this second? and what am I doing to move that forward?
Its hard to feel connected with your current to do list when you have not focused on what you really want to do. Even making time for the question is elaborate enough - how do you sit down and ask yourself: what do I want to do with my life and how do I want to get there. Exchanging words and ideas is a fun exercise but at a certain point you run out of both, and then what?. That's when the studying becomes essential, once we identify that hunger for knowledge the university becomes your best friend. Will Durant puts it very elegantly in his book "What is Civilization":
“ . . . the great men of the past into your homes. Put their works or lives on your shelves as books, their architecture, sculpture, and painting on your walls as pictures; let them play their music for you. Attune your ears to Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy. Make room in your rooms for Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Euripides, Lucretius, Christ, Seneca, Montaigne, Marcus Aurelius, Heloise, Shakespeare, Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Gibbon, Goethe, Shelley, Keats, Heine, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spengler, Anatole France, Albert Schweitzer. Let these men be your comrades, your bedfellows; give them half an hour each day; slowly they will share in remaking you to perspective, tolerance, wisdom, and a more avid love of a deepened life.”
So what I am trying to do now is to read through this list:
Will Durant's 100 Best Books for an Education
Then go through this one:
The Harvard Classics
One should note that lists are always incomplete and will be shunned by critics, time or fate.
Stay tuned.
