I grew up in a Southern one-stoplight town. Was always a good student who learned to win at the academic game. To my memory, I rarely read my assigned readings, but I learned to intuit what my teachers expected, I took notes in class, I memorized what I needed to give back on tests, and I became a master at multiple choice, matching, and fill-in-the-blank questions. That got me through elementary school and all but a few high school classes. (I did have to read in a couple!)
I resonated with every answer being the right one or the wrong one, and I worked for those rewards of getting it right. The top grades, the praise, the sense of being on top, in control, at least of that part of my young life. Every question had one right answer and several wrong ones. Just like my home life. Just like my Southern Baptist church life. Right and Wrong. Black and White. No unanswerable questions. No gray. That was life as I knew it.
It’s funny now, but I also recall participating in subjects and classes without ever thinking about what their names meant. What did “Social Studies” mean, and “Language Arts”? What was “World Cultures,” and “Western Civilization”? I signed up for Drafting my senior year at the suggestion of my guidance counselor, with no idea what “Drafting” meant. I took Economics and Sociology with the football coach and still had no idea at the end of the year what either of those words meant.
Nevertheless, I chose enough of the right answers on the tests and graduated from high school with honors, then headed to college without any knowledge of the new systems that would then frame my days. I remember trying to understand what “credit hours” meant, why it was recommended to take only 15 when I was used to all day school five days a week, and, much bigger, how did majors and minors translate into future jobs? Even in my own majors, I don’t think I grasped the meaning of “Liberal Arts” (see footnote 1) or “Romance Languages” (see footnote 2) in my full four years there. Some concepts I never really understood, or some even questioned, until years later.
None of us ever knows what we don’t know. Instead we imagine the world from our own experiences. College, I thought, would be more right and wrong answers, more of what I knew education to be, but it was a different world, which can’t be fully imagined without having been there, any more than I understand my plumber’s explanation yesterday, or my veteran student’s memories of Afghanistan. I can listen and read to better understand, but until I go to plumbing school or to war, I don’t have a framework in which to fit them.
When I hear people talk about going to college, whose lives took them to other paths, the misconceptions are like mine were. Often they seem to picture college students sitting in classes all day being fed information that they memorize to give back on right-or-wrong-answer tests. Instead, college is a different kind of world altogether. What I began to learn in college was not more answers, but more questions. I was challenged to read, to question, to wrestle, to process; not that that was always the assignment, but that that’s what was necessary to push me to the new kind of thinking. “Critical thinking,” we call it. Another of those tricky terms, having nothing to do with criticizing anyone, but about considering multiple views of a situation or question, realizing that so much of the world is not black or white but varying shades of gray.
And contrary to what anyone would be expected to understand without having been there, I suspect most of my college education did not come from the classroom. College was my first time living away from my parents, away from my church, away from my small town. It was a first time for freedom, to explore who I was, to make my own mistakes and pay my own consequences. A first time sharing a dorm hall with a person of color and coming face to face with my own questions of why she didn’t fit my unconscious expectations. A first time, having been placed in the International House dorm, to be surrounded by people from all over the world, with all kinds of cultural habits and philosophies. A first time surrounded by people of all (and no) religions. A first time my accent, which matched every person I had ever known before, would be worthy of an entire room’s laughter. This kind of learning was far more alive than books and tests, which, by the way, gradually changed mostly to research papers and projects.
College years are such an important time of learning. In class, yes. Psychology, for example, was an important general course for helping to understand our own selves. And of course we need our major classes to prepare us for our careers later. But more than that, college is a time that stretches who we are and our concepts of who others are, a stretching that, once begun, continues for a lifetime.
Let me tell you a funny story. If you aren’t familiar with the Myers-Brigg test, it’s a “type indicator,” a kind of personality test that asks a series of questions and places you in one of 16 “types.” I now love this test and have used and studied it on several occasions, as it relates to vocation, relationships, religion, etc. But the summer between high school graduation and college freshman year, when I was herded into a large auditorium to take this test I knew nothing about, I hated it. We were told there were no right or wrong answers, but that made no sense to me, so I took the test in frustration, attempting to choose the “right” answers. Oddly it still “typed” me in what I consider now my correct type. But here’s the funny part of the story:
When we returned to campus, prior to freshman year, again we were taken to the auditorium and given the results of our tests. Now, this was a great idea. What they did next was divide us into our sixteen “types” so we, incoming freshmen who knew no one on campus yet, could meet others like us, as potential new friends. My “type” was ISTJ, Introvert Sensing Thinking Judging (again, misleading words until you’re familiar with the test), so all the other ISTJs and I met in one corner of the large room. The room was bustling noisily with energetic introductions and new relationships being forged. But in my corner there was silence. I was frustrated and thinking “I have nothing in common with these people. What a stupid test.” Yet, in my silence, I was exactly like the others around me - silent introverts processing this ridiculous activity inside our own minds, as any ISTJ in such a situation would do.
I share that story as a picture of my 18-year-old understanding of self and tests and right and wrong answers, all of which would soon begin to change, not primarily because of college assignments, but because of new experiences and freedoms and contradictions I had to work out for myself.
After college I would return to school twice more for two Master’s Degrees, each of which stretched me in their own ways, quite differently from that first time. Academics was/is my education. It’s not for everyone. Nor is it superior or inferior to other paths of education, like those of the plumber and veteran mentioned above.The world needs my gifts, and the world needs theirs.
The Myers-Brigg test taught me later that there is no one right path for all lives, no one right answer to life’s questions, and no one “type” that is better, smarter, or more valuable than any other. We are all different, and we all need each other’s differences.
My definition of "smarter" (or "wisdom") has become this:
realizing that we know so very little,
finding peace in the unanswered questions,
and choosing respect and compassion for all of humanity.
Postscript: Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the wonderful gift of college. College is not for everyone, but I can't imagine where I might be without it, or any life I'd rather have. Forever grateful!
Footnotes:
1 The word “liberal” has recently been kidnapped by politics as a derogatory synonym for “Democrat,” but the word itself is neither negative nor political. It comes from the same Latin root as the words “liberty” and “library,” meaning “free” and “book.” “Liberal Arts” refers to a broader scope of general courses, often required prior to beginning one’s chosen major. Courses like: Literature, Philosophy, Math, Science, and Psychology.
2 “Romance Languages” are not about “romance” but about “Rome” and “Roman.” They are languages that derive from Latin, the ancient Roman language. These languages include Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.
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