My Years in College

Kids have just got settled into their dorms at college, and freshmen just about ready to think seriously about Life, College and Everything.  Some of them have begun attending small four-year schools, and others have gone right into big state universities, and a few into very prestigious schools indeed, where everyone seems to look at you as if you were their biggest obstacle to a successful college career.

It was much the same in the bad old days when I first found myself on campus.  I had barely scraped through the examinations that decided which schools I was qualified to apply to, but I was thrilled to be actually going to college.

Those were the bad old days of hazing.  I was not bullied very heavily, but I was naive, and I thought I was being seriously victimized, though I wasn't.  Anyway, in retrospect, that is a non-issue.  (If any of my readers has to deal with hazing--I'd be surprised if you are; I expect that you're a mature 60-year-old, at the very least--I would be of absolutely no help whatsoever.  I'm sorry I brought that up.

So, though I was quite a mediocre student: a sort of C level type, I had been among the better students at my high school.  All my friends, among the top 5 or so in our school, were distinguished by how interested we were in our subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, principally.

I absolutely loved my first semester.  The professors actually knew their material backwards and forwards (which is not uncommon, obviously), and were eager to lay their stuff on us freshmen.  Most professors are inspired to do their best for freshmen; they're unspoiled, not jaded, and willing to believe that they might not have the whole story, coming in from high school.

Of late, however, I have encountered freshmen who are jaded, and who do believe that they know all there is to know.  This is unfortunate; the student is the loser in that scenario.

As the semester went on, I began to notice that some of the other guys were picking up the material a little faster than I was.  Welcome to the real world.  One thing we all have to do is to learn to handle not being the cat's whiskers any more.  But luckily for me, there was no shortage of people willing to talk about the material we were being given, to analyze the relative strengths of the different instructors--not in a particularly critical way; actually we were quite appreciative of their strong points--and to compare the various topics that we particularly enjoyed, which were obviously very varied.

My first year ended pretty well; I did a lot better than I expected.  Unfortunately, I was not permitted to declare a major in the area I was most interested in; I had to make do with mathematics.  At that time I was more into physics.  Too bad.

Once I discovered what a mathematics major (and a physics minor) entailed, I was amazed.  It turned out that we did an enormous volume of theoretical physics as part of the mathematics major.  You see, physics provides the fodder for a great deal of the machinery that we develop in mathematics, so this situation is unavoidable.  But we were signed up for courses in awesome areas, such as Quantum Mechanics, Analytical Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Relativity, Electromagnetic Theory, and so forth, but also Abstract Algebra, Matrix Theory, Differential Geometry . . . now I'm babbling; none of this has anything to do with what I want to say.

As time went on, though I did terrible at exams, we became quite a closely-knit group, and there a few fellows who preferred to study on their own, but many of us found it better to figure things out as a group.

In addition, though I did not take many courses in music or literature or social sciences beyond the absolute minimum, I spent a lot of time reading, and singing in choirs, and playing pianos, etc, which detracted from schoolwork.  I sang with a semi-professional choir about two hours away, where we met on the weekends.  A friend of mine and I took a bus out there, sang, stayed with family, sang again on Saturday night, and headed back to school on Sunday.  We also sang in the choir at college, though that was not a very serious thing.  (In fact, I took charge of the choir for a couple of years.  It was--OK.)

Things only got better, in terms of how interesting the topics were.  But as far as performing on tests, I was terrible.  So I graduated with a regular degree, not the Cum Laude's that so many of my friends managed to turn in.

As luck would have it, once I clawed my way into graduate school, I found that I was in a lot better shape than many of my fellow-students.  I had dreamed that doing research would be the most fun I could ever have.  Unfortunately, I simply hated research.  How interesting research is all depends on the problem you're assigned, and there just is no guarantee that you will stumble on a problem in which you're interested, and in which there is someone on the faculty to advise you.

But I put in an enormous amount of coursework--far more than most graduate students--and also learned a fair degree of computer science and numerical analysis (which probably means less than nothing to my readers!) and presently found myself hired to teach at an excellent school, and, as they say, the rest is history.

If there is one thing I can attest to, the greatest gift of all is the gift of finding something interesting about anything you need to learn.  That is all the Law and the Prophets.  I don't think anyone taught me this skill; I think it came possible from my mother, who was a teacher herself, and who was always interested in what I was trying to explain to her, be it topology, or programming, or whatever.  Either that rubbed off, or she passed on one of her interest genes on to me.

There are always some authorities who urge you to give up everything, and focus on what you're trying to do.  That may work for some people.  But it does not work for anyone who wants to be a teacher.  An ultra-specialized teacher is a bad teacher.  Your primary task is to relate to your students.  A good teacher is Interested in their subject, and Interested in their student.  To be the latter, you simply have to give up being specialized, and learn to be interested in many things.

As a teacher, I was required to teach several subjects in which I had little or no training.  Someone had to teach them, so why not me?  All I brought to the challenge was my insane tendency to be interested in oddball subjects.

School is a place that it is a privilege to be in.  To consider school a sort of penance, a sort of punishment, where you pay your dues, and somehow blossom into a highly-paid executive, is to set yourself up for misery.  Everyone in my immediate family just enjoys what they do to the utmost, and I don't think that it is luck; they all seem to be perfectly suited to be easily engaged with tasks they're given.  Of course, we're a small family; a large family unavoidably has some duds who cannot be inspired by anything.

Part of the trick is to surround yourself with people who have a positive outlook, and it often rubs off.  Similarly, if you surround yourself with lawless types, that rubs off too; surround yourself with pessimists, and you want to shoot yourself.  (I'm sure there's something in the Bible that says exactly this, but it's almost an embarrassment to have to fall back on religious scriptures to make a perfectly valid point.)

As I have said above, without any attempt at deception, I did not sacrifice my various side-interests to focus on my schoolwork.  This means that with my college degree I am quite unable to impress anyone.  For students who are determined to create an undergraduate record that is impressive, you must either give up--at least a part of--your side interests, in order to deliver a brilliant set of grades.  Or, you have to work like ten dogs, and hopefully your side interests will make you feel better about it.  Or, you have to work like ten dogs, and give up your side interests, and your memories of college will be sheer misery.  Just don't be an alcoholic and misbehave towards members of the opposite sex.

Archimedes