roachboy

i had written a quite long post that was largely autobiographical, but decided to delete it and do something shorter instead. i have to say that i initially thought of saying something parallel (in terms of my experience) to what ustwo did in post no. 10--but i think he did a fine job on it there and it seemed redundant.

i went to college for a year right out of high school--i realized pretty quickly that i did not know what i was doing there, that it was a waste of time for me to be there and so--despite huge parental pressure not to do it---i quit.

i stayed quit until i was 24, at which point i started over at a much better school. and i kept going because i wanted to, because i found it engaging, working in a strange netherworld between philosophy, history, social theory and literature--i have a ph.d. in history an have been teaching at the university level for about 10 years.

i am really ambivalent about academicworld.
at this point, i think i will always be ambivalent about it.

there is a side of academics in the states that is a simple information factory. this side is a big deal because it is about numbers--if you deliver information as a commodity and do it in spectacle form, so that going to class is like watching tv, you appeal to alot of folk because you offer them an experience without necessary engagement.

there is also a side of it that is more than that, but you will not necessarily find that side unless you either (a) stumble onto it or (b) you know why you are there, more or less what interests you and you put in the work to figure out which version of a univeristy experience suits who and where you are.


i think, in the main, that it is idiotic for most folk to expect that at 18 they are in a position to understand enough about themselves, about what is possible, about where they might land, to make the best use of the univeristy as a resource. i sure as hell didnt know, and i was not able to do it. at 18 i thought i knew everything and that everyone i met, students and faculty alike, were kinda stupid. now that might have been true of the folk i encountered, but the other important fact is that was an arrogant little shit at the time. it is embarrassing to look back at this other guy who looks like me and carried around my name.

i think it should be routine for folk to take time off between high school and college.

because my experience is that you can in fact learn a huge amount outside college and that what you learn outside can be more important than what you would otherwise experience had you gone through simply because it was the expected thing to do between the ages of 18 and 22. i see this in my younger self. i saw this when i was a 24 year old undergraduate interacting with younger undergrads--who simply were not in the same place, and were not serious about what they were doing...and i have really seen it while teaching.

on the other hand, i dont think there is anything once and for all about the decision opt out. i dont think that there is anything necessarily better or worse about it. and i think that articles extolling all the rich people who quit and never went back speaks to nothing about this choice.

i would think it makes more sense to see going through university as an option at any point that you might or might not take up as a function of what you happen to be doing, what you want.

unless what you really beleive is that any life choice is justified only by money--in which case maybe you're right--my brother when younger was an undiagnosed dyslexic who never finished high school and he is a millionaire. he is happy with where he is etc, and i am happy for him--though fundamentally i dont think either of us understands how the other is in the world, what really makes the other tick. and i am sure that neither of us would want to do things as the other has.

if you never get to the point where you think that this particular type of structured approach to learning particular to a univeristy is worth doing, then dont do it.

and i do not see where anything about this decision to go or not go requires the accumulation of information about other people to justify it. all it really says is that you are not fucked if you don't play the game this way. and it's true: you aren't.

last autobio story: i am interested in two main areas of activity in the 3-d world: the stuff i write about on the one hand, and the piano on the other. i chose radically opposed paths for each area: for the more academic stuff, i played the game out. for the piano, i refused. i am in my 40s and feel like it is only in the past 4 years or so that i have pulled the piano work into a good working relation to the other things that interest me--it took a long, long time---and i dont know if i could have brought this about faster another way. but i wonder about it.
because, in the end, the only thing i found about working outside these types of structure is that it took me more time to figure things out working alone than it did once i started working through a bigger set of folk, with access to more information.

what i have figured out (phrased as banalities):

life is a process. you don't do your most important stuff when you are a kid, except by accident. they might be really great accidents, but chances are that you do not know how you get to it. later, if you wind round to a similar place (if you think it interesting to go back there) you can know.

genius is just a word. a useless word at that. all it really means is "i dont know how to deal with you" spun in a vaguely positive direction. it describes nothing, says nothing, helps no-one.
if you think that anyone who makes anything does so on the basis of simple "natural" ability without regard for control, you are fooling yourself.
on the other hand, control is not a simple function of information, and a univeristy will not give you control--it gives you access to information--control over that--the ability to move around within information, to organize it, to use it, to push through it--which is the most important element of an education--that is yours to figure out.
no amount of information will get you to it--you get to it, on your own terms, through what you do.
and what you do is not necessarily your day gig.

discipline is a function of control; control is a function of discipline. but like control, discipline does not mean one thing--it is not about submission--it is not about respect for anyone or anything--it is about how you think and the ways in which how you think shape what you do. this too is yours to work out--this too will not be handed you by virtue of going to a university.

a university education is one route that can give you access to a sense of options, a range of information and ways to process and reprocess that information.
it will not on its own get you to the point where you can do anything with that information.
it will not let you in on ways to determine what is and is not relevant.
you have to figure that out for yourself.
you are responsible to yourself for doing it.
of course there is no real pressure on you to do any of this--the american consumer way is not geared around these kind of questions.

one thing i saw in ustwo's post is an outline of a kind of craft approach to what he does. it is circumscribed by the field he works in, like any other.
i think what i am talking about is another way of thinking about the craft of what you do, but from a different set of interests, a different space.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite