May 22, 2003

• So What Do You Know?

  
  

  In the past several months, I've met a plethora of Xangans.  Some in real life and others through the unusual (for me) medium of Instant Messaging.  I can tell you that if you are an IM fan, I'm hard to catch.  The demands of my life mean that I'm almost never online at the same time as anyone else, and even when I do show up, I'm not here long. 

  
  

  Be that as it may, I've noticed a surprising trend.  Talking with these people who have known me only through Xanga, in every case, one of the first questions asked is, "Where did you go to school and what kind of degree do you hold?"  If I were a paranoid person, I'd think that the question was motivated by a desire to put me in an intellectual box from which the person could say, "Oh, well, of course you'd have that opinion, you have a degree in whateverdom."   The context of the question and the follow-ups to it do not support my paranoid theory of the inquiry.  In each and every case, the next question has been along the lines of, "Why on earth would you read Immanuel Kant if you didn't have to?"

  
  

  Frankly, I'm not terribly impressed by my degree.  I hold a Bachelor's in Business Administration from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville (go Hogs! whooo, Pig, sooooie).  Several years after I completed that degree I moved on to Oklahoma where I began a Master's of Social Work Program at OU.  I dropped out of that program after the first year due to philosophical reasons.  That ended my foray into education for the pursuit of a degree. 

  
  

  One of my favorite professors at the UofA taught statistics, and programming languages.  Of course, back then we were studying BASIC, Fortran, and COBOL, languages now considered as ancient and incomprehensible to my PC as Sanskrit is to me.  But I have fond memories of Dr. Thibault patiently telling me, "You need to walk before you run!" And shaking his head (he was also my advisor) over some outlandish course request that he would have to sign for me, "You sure don't let school get in the way of your education."  I loved that line and took it to heart. 

  
  

  While other people in my class graduated with the required number of hours plus maybe an elective or two, I had over 30 hours beyond the degree requirement.  If I saw a course in the catalog that appealed to me, I hunted down the professor and badgered him into allowing me entrance even if there were prerequisites that I had no intention of taking.  I was able to take Middle Eastern Politics and Advanced Soviet American Relations (both senior level poli sci courses) just because Dr. Vanneman liked my attitude.  I weasled my way into Existential Philosophy and Ethics before I took the required Introduction to Philosophy.  And I never went back and picked up "Figure Drawing" which was supposed to be completed before I took Calligraphy.  I had to take calligraphy because you see, I had just read Frank Herbert's Dune, and I needed to have the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear inscribed and framed for my wall.

  
  

  Thats been my pattern for everything I pick up.  I have a question, or a need so I go looking for information.  Usually, the book that introduces me to the topic only raises more questions so I go on to the next and the next and the next.  I find the books that I want to read from the footnotes and the bibliographies of the interesting sections. 

  
  

  I have not yet developed my reading list for the summer.  In fact I haven't picked up anything new since February when I devoured the material on the life and work of J R R Tolkien.  I've been doing a lot of writing for the past 3 months and that's taking a great deal of my time and energy.  But I'm noticing that the further I go in time from the periods when I stiumlate myself with challenging ideas and new perspectives, the more I feel that my well is drying up. 

  
  

  I'm certain that I want to spend some time rereading old favorites.  What better way to enjoy the beach than with Hawking's Brief History of Time, William Barrett's Irrational Man or Jacob Neusner's Judaism in the New Testament?  But in addition to these, I'll need something new, and since George R R Martin is being slow about releasing the next installment of his series, I'm scouting around for interesting selections.  Oh, I know I want to add Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, but that will barely get me through a couple weeks at best. 

  
  

  So  do you have any suggestions?

  • 9:53 am
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