Tonight I went out of town with Danny (and around 30 other folks who I didn’t know) to check out the meteor shower. There weren’t many meteors but the sky was real, real nice and I enjoyed trying to figure out the constellations and chatting about space with Danny. It was a really worthwhile experience – sometimes I miss the Milky Way and the vast expanses of land that accompany not-the-city.
Now, I have a CS exam tomorrow, but I went on this five-hour excursion anyways. As it stands, I haven’t done any studying besides attend a review session (and overhear Duncan listening to videotaped lectures online), and Charles tells me that this exam looks a lot harder than the last one. I’ll do my best, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all I get is 65 +- 15 percent.
People here really care about academics – or at least grades. There’s strong peer pressure to get good grades in things, even if you aren’t learning that much. I definitely think it’s a good idea to be an organized person who can study well and manage time well and be disciplined, and I also believe that there’s a lot to be gained, at a personal level, through really understanding lots of interesting and new things. But are grades themselves important? There’s certainly a correlation between getting high marks and getting lots of understanding, but I will always value the latter far more than the former.
So, understanding. Wisdom, perhaps. I have very little. But I think I’m yearning for it. Wisdom enough to know what to do with my life. And it’s nights like tonight that make me pause, gain some perspective, and think.
What sorts of things has my thinking yielded? Well, for one, I don’t like the city! I think this means I should try to get away from it. Part of me envisions a future in which I abandon my academic life and find a job in a rural town somewhere near a forest. I could live off the land (in a loosely metaphorical sense), have a great view of the night sky, and go through life without too much stress, really experiencing things.
That’s almost crazy-talk, I know. If I just suffer through another five semesters of essays and problem sets (and perhaps some research-y things) I’ll be essentially set for a decent career, just like anyone else with a degree from here. Are those sorts of things really worthwhile, though?
I find myself questioning lots of things these days. Why. Why do I do the things I do? Why do I feel the things I feel? Part of this might stem from the fact that I’m far enough away from my home (in perhaps two different senses) that I can finally look back objectively on my formative experiences, and connect now-Tom with then-Tom. I’ve touched on some of this in a previous post, but I think I should really try to get a handle on the things I experienced growing up so that I’m more aware of who I am today. (I notice that a bit of this borders on L. Ron Hubbard rhetoric, so I’ll be careful as I proceed in this regard.)
Something else I’m questioning: my pursuit of science in general. Some of the things I’d like to address about myself, I don’t think I’ll ever learn to address by learning more physics or math or computer science. In this specific regard, I find myself eerily drawn to the humanities. Who am I? What drives me? Why do I feel I have to do some of the things I do? These are not questions that equations or algorithms will solve! But by reading the ideas that other folks have developed — and really thinking about them, in ways concrete enough to put to pen (keyboard, really) — it is here that I suspect I may find some answers, or at the very least, better ways for me to find my own answers.
So Tom, what, you want to run off and become a hippie English major, huh? Spend your whole life looking inwards, accomplishing nothing for the outside world, produce nothing but some pretty words and feelings — will that satisfy you?
There’s definitely that element inside me. But I don’t think I could ever settle for this. What was it that prompted this introspection, eh? Staring at the night sky is a really wonderful experience if the sky is dark enough. I think I’m dwelling a lot on Sagan these days ( http://xkcd.com/663/ 
), and his line of reasoning compels me a lot. There’s this thing called the Universe, and in a little, tiny, insignificant corner of it, there’s a speck called Earth with a lot of people-shaped creatures running around on it. Time will come and go, and the star that the speck orbits will eventually burn out, but — in the meantime — some of these people-shaped creatures have come close to really understanding what this whole Universe thing is about. And we know of nothing else in the Universe that has achieved this.
Isn’t that worthwhile?
For now, though, it’s time for me to go to sleep, wake up, sit through a fantastic lecture about a book I haven’t read yet, and then stumble over to an examination room and hope for the best. Life, uh, sure is complicated. Maybe someday I’ll learn to deal with how complicated it is.
#1 by rachel on November 18, 2009 - 8:47 am
This strikes the chord that is so quiet and muffled here at Harvard. There has to be more than grades. I’ve resigned myself (reluctantly) to the idea that I’m not here for getting good grades; I’m here to learn and to become a student of the world and the universe. Hang in there. Running off and becoming a hippie every once in a while is worth it, too–good summer activity.
#2 by Anthony the Patriot on November 18, 2009 - 2:30 pm
Subject I think are relevant in descending order: philosophy, psychology, neuroscience. As for the grades vs. learning, that is something that makes me think I might be happier at a place like Reed. But at my first approximation, academia does not have the resources to satisfy these kinds of philosophical needs.