intellectual venting session

Sometimes I think my mind is going to explode--I've finally discovered how much I love to think critically, and it blows me away. I'm numb with thought, with possibility.

That sounds like such a romanticized view of learning, but it's true. I'm starting to look at my classes with eyes that are looking for more than just a good grade or getting the credit over with so I can graduate and move on with life--I'm starting to love learning for how it might stimulate and change my thinking. It's getting harder to sit in those classes that appear to be solely for the purpose of getting students to regurgitate the information dictated to them. They're boring!

Society seems to have reduced the value of education to placing yourself in an environment of fact dispensing and fact consuming. If you know enough about everything, you'll be smarter and able to make more money and drive a better car and own a bigger house and be a good American. This is good to a point--how could you not learn about history without knowing the specifics of the American Revolution? Yet, anyone who seriously studies history would undoubtedly think it a travesty to only emphasize this type of knowledge ! The value of studying history is in critically analyzing the society, decisions, politic, cultures, etc. of the past and incorporating those ideas into the here and now. Critical thinking is essential to developing the mind. I feel like this is a dying idea. Other things have become more important--pursuing academia is seen as a means to a career and little else. What has happened to the love of learning that caused people to become disciples of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates? It seems as if learning like this has become impractical and thus expendable. But it is through this type learning that we can impact our society and realize where we are and have been in order to shape the future.

And I realize I'm reacting here, and these statements are sweeping generalizations. But I'm frustrated that I can't convey the reason I want to pursue grad school to my mom or friends that haven't gone to college or even those that do. I tell them the reasons in halting fragments that I've related before in other discussions and conversations that stirred this passion and life in me, and I know that now they sound impractical, a paper-thin reason to their ears because they sometimes sound (and have sounded) impractical to mine. Why should I go into more debt to fill my head with philosophers and intellectual writings and theories and rhetoric? Because I want to learn...I want to redeem in a small way the Christian academic....I'm passionate about learning...they make me think. Because I want to.

But I want them to understand. Some of me wants them to understand simply so I'll feel better about the decision; part of me wants everyone to approve wholeheartedly so that I'll know it was the right decision--because if everyone agrees, that decision can't be wrong--right? And I'm being sarcastic, but this is the mind-set I'm trying to scrap from my mind like stubborn mussels from a ship's hull.

But mostly this whole process is scary because the world and God are turning out to be bigger than I could have ever imagined and hoped or dreamed they might be. I'm glad they are bigger, but I'm afraid I won't know what to do with that when I've lived with such a small world and small God for so long. At the same time, I feel euphoric because realizing the scope of reality is more than breathtaking and I'm realizing even more that my mind will never be able to fully conceive it. But I want to know as much as I can understand and continually understand into a deeper layer--because that is growth.