Pacing crucial for education

Those imposing towers of literature can signify different things to different people: a… Those imposing towers of literature can signify different things to different people: a graveyard of broken dreams, a laborious chore, dusty dinosaurs of the past. To most college students, however, the bookshelf is a measure of just how far they have not come. The books seem to be taunting, flapping open and shut, “We were here long before you and we will be here long after you.”

Entering college is a sobering experience for anyone, Thursday nights notwithstanding. The best and the brightest are plucked from their lofty positions atop the intellectual echelons of every one-stoplight town “outside Philadelphia” prepared to continue leaving their same distinct marks in a bigger pond – only to realize that everyone else has the same plan. And is a hell of a lot smarter.

It’s easy to feel, as Robin Williams’s character reminisces in “Dead Poets Society,” like the “intellectual equivalent of a 98-pound weakling – I would go to the beach, and people would kick copies of Byron in my face.”

Coming from high school’s cutthroat valedictorian sweepstakes, it’s hard to shake off the preconception of education as a Mark Burnett Survivor-style strategy game – for some it takes the full expanse of their five years in Oakland.

The sooner that it is realized, the better, for education is least of all a competition. Education is not status, it’s not a steppingstone and it is not vocational training. Education should be a journey. Not an easy journey, either, but one that visits all of your most deluded misconceptions and challenges your most cherished beliefs. As Larry Meredith, who teaches religious studies and is the greatest professor I ever had the privilege to sit at the feet of, put it, “Education can be as epic as Homer’s ‘Odyssey.'”

Changing the world is one of the most common aspirations among college-age students. It should not be overlooked, though, that it is equally altruistic to change one’s self. If you receive your diploma on graduation day with your head full of the same dreams that you had while Surviving your Arrival, you haven’t pushed yourself very hard.

Mark Twain cautioned to not let one’s schooling interfere with their education, but I don’t see the two as being mutually exclusive. Learning is indeed a lifelong pursuit, but this is a particularly advantageous time to get one’s bearings straight.

For all the club officer positions you may or may not hold and all of the causes you may or may not support, rest assured that you will have plenty of time to heed Walt Whitman’s call of contributing a verse to the powerful play. The true opportunities of college lie in unsung moments – in getting lost in a book that isn’t on any of your syllabi on a warm day on the Cathedral lawn. Take advantage of these moments, for they may get harder to come by as the trek continues.

The worst teachers are those who use cajoling and threats to convey their messages, the likes of which have given the world standardized testing – those who make education a challenge, which is not to be confused with challenging. Operating via e-mail and T.A. drones so as not to waste their research time, these are the wolves lurking in the woods along the trail to education.

The best teachers are those who tear down the gaps of knowledge between themselves and their students, meeting them in the middle to pull their hands straight into the eye of the storm of discovery. They are the ones who instill the concept that all the books that you have yet to read don’t represent how much you don’t know, but rather how many treasures are still out there to be mined by your mind.

Don’t be intimidated by that guy in the front row name-dropping Kant and Voltaire – no journey of learning is exactly alike. As long as you continue to always follow your own path, you’ll learn everything you really need to know.

E-mail Daron Christopher at djc14@pitt.edu.