363 - 369 Perspectives: "Study broadly and without fear"

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

"Study broadly and without fear"

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COMS 369 L02

In his recent video, What To Do With Your Life (above) John Green (bestselling author and famous internet personality) said, “study broadly and without fear.” It wasn't until I heard this highly quotable nugget of wisdom that I realized that this seems to embody the objective of every university as an institution. And it wasn't until I had this realization that I considered that maybe universities are (as they say) doing it wrong. After considering it, I have come to find that the very structure of a bachelor’s degree is counterproductive, if your objective is to learn, to become an expert in a subject. If your objective is to have a horizon-broadening experience, and gain general knowledge about the world, then more power to you. But I find that the tools of learning exist outside of these walls, today more than ever, and that instead of helping you learn, universities are training you to do something much different.

But before I can tell you why universities are notoriously bad at doing it, we need to know what learning itself is. I can tell you what learning is, to me, but if you were educated in a particularly liberal Canadian public school any time in the last forty years, you know that everyone has a unique learning style, and that yours, most likely, is different. But you would also have learned that learning, if nothing else, is everywhere, and that we often change our minds when deciding what to learn. The first time I can remember being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said “a scientist who also tells jokes.” Needless to say, I am no longer pursuing that career, but you can see how inspired I was by Bill Nye (you know, the science guy) who in a recent AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit, famously wrote “everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.” I have carried this philosophy (which isn't exactly new, but a great summary of what has always been the case) through my education. An English teacher in high school knew something I didn't, and I was inspired to pursue literature and writing. In the first year of an English degree, I found myself less inspired by literature than by my fellow YouTube partners, and considered a career as a content creator, and today I find myself in a communications program, hoping that will help me along that path. If that isn't studying broadly, I don't know what is.

The point is, though, that our goals and interests change. To me, learning is less about mandating the study of divergent subjects in order to earn credit for only one (as, you may notice, universities like to do) as it is about pursuing an interest, being self-motivated toward a goal, and seeking mastery of a subject. When I wanted to learn how to design and build an instrument (which I did) I did so almost to the exclusion of all else. I didn't study poetry while I practiced trigonometry, and I didn't learn about philosophy while I learned a digital video editing workflow. Learning, in my experience, is a focused pursuit that takes place in one subject at a time, and this is something that I think universities dissuade powerfully.

We all know how a university workload stacks up; you need to take four or five courses, in parallel, per-semester, in order to be considered a full-time student. Often, these courses have little or nothing in common with one another, and sometimes you might have no interest in the course itself, but alas: the course is a requirement for your major. Remember the part where I said learning can only really take place in one subject at a time? Universities, instead of engaging in a process of actually learning subjects, engage in a much different one. I'm sure you've heard the phrase “fake it until you make it,” before, usually applied to things like public speaking, or on-the-job training, but this seems to be what universities have become: places to learn how to pretend you are able to exceed your potential. There is no way that you could work for five different bosses at five different jobs, running on five different schedules; universities seem to teach us how to put the least possible effort into satisfying as many people as possible. Essentially, faking it until you get a degree. Instead of becoming experts, which are in high demand, this horizon-broadening experience is a life-school that prepares you to be overwhelmed by your workload and manage unreasonable requirements. And you thought you came here to learn?

But why are you really a student? What is your endgame strategy? What are you planning on doing with that degree? I'm going to make an educated guess that it has something to do with your career plans. University graduates make more on average than high school graduates, who make more on average than high school drop-outs, and so on. Employers will be looking for that degree that tells them “this person went through what I had to, and this makes them worthy.” And you would be right to think all of that. But employers today are looking for more than the now-ubiquitous bachelor's degree. So what do you do? Those campus clubs sure aren't going to cut it, so are you prepared for two to five more years of university in order to stand out? It pays to be an expert. And universities are in the business of creating experts, if only after a staggering amount of time spent on unrelated study and money spent on tuition and texts. So how can you get ahead?

As I mentioned before, learning exists outside of a university setting. However, degrees only exist within that system. That being said, universities find themselves in increasingly heated competition with more accessible forms of education, such as the Khan academy, YouTube EDU, and the vast wealth of training and informational resources the internet has to offer. It is, today more than ever, easy to independently become an expert. If universities are to survive in this ecosystem of greater informational abundance, they need to adapt. But wait, if you study one thing alone, won't you miss out on all that horizon broadening? Thanks for asking. My point in all of this is that studying broadly and without fear should be the choice of an individual, and not the mandate of an institution. As it stands, there are so many requirements on what and how you are to study in a university setting that the actual element of learning is lost. Regardless of what society needs, you need to be a self-motivated, driven, eager learner who demands expertise rather than hoops to jump through. If you want to get ahead, you need to become an expert; you need to have applicable skills that you are able to show off. If you want to get the most out of your education, you need to know which questions to ask, and understand that the actual process of learning is infinitely more valuable than the process of completing a degree.

Sources:

Green, J. (2012). What To Do With Your Life. http://youtu.be/3lkn8MS3n8Q (streaming video)

Nye, B. (2012). IAM Bill Nye the Science Guy, AMA. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x9pq0/iam_bill_nye_the_science_guy_ama/ (webpage)

363 - 369 Perspectives

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

"Study broadly and without fear"

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