My maternal grandfather taught college English most of his life. He was a lifelong source of advice, especially when it came to my schooling, and he was invaluable when I began applying to college. When he passed away on my birthday during my first semester at Duke, my mom and I had long conversations about his important influence on our lives. I mentioned that being at Duke when he died reminded me of one of his lessons I had previously disregarded: “Learn for its own sake.” I entered my second semester at Duke with different motivations, inspired anew by this retrospection, convinced that credentialist pursuits were beneath me.
I decided I was in college not to learn facts or even tools, but to learn how to learn. I structured my education to balance different ways of knowing. The philosophy major provided me the theoretical, the precise, the rational. The public policy major was more practical, and it was applicable in a variety of grounded contexts. The art history minor filled the gaps between the two—the sensual, the visual, the ability to look beyond rhetoric and numbers to see an answer. It was a purposefully crafted undergraduate education, and it required a rigorous course load. The rigor itself was most definitely a factor that influenced my decision to go for it.
I have overloaded every semester since my first. My grandfather’s counsel made me realize I only had seven semesters to freely learn whatever I wanted. Given that there is no additional charge to students who choose to take five over four classes in a semester, it only made sense to get the most bang for my tuition buck. I wanted to deep dive in a few subjects and introduce myself to many others. There were too many subjects that intrigued me and too many professors I wanted to meet, and since Khan Academy was never quite as satisfying as a college classroom, I could never say no. It was a fantastic dilemma to have.
Admittedly, after a few semesters of overloading, my hyper-enrollment became less an inspired zeal and more a validating marker of my identity. Overloading every semester fulfilled my perennial desire to challenge myself. I probably took away some self-righteous satisfaction by thinking I was in college for the right reasons. I looked down on my pre-professional peers, on those whose primary goal was getting into law or medical school. I resented those who were just motivated by grades. I was a haughty renaissance man, or at least I was trying to be.
I have since tempered my highbrow assumptions about how one should choose courses, largely because I have tasted too much of my own medicine from individuals who think philosophy is a silly major. I have come to realize that seeing college as just four years of academic exploration bears a lot of privilege. For better or for worse, I come from a background that praises this explorative approach to learning, but this is not the case for everyone. I have also discovered that any group, university, economy or society needs the pre-professional, the deep divers and the renaissance individuals. We need the people who will adroitly provide a service, those who will spend their entire lives perfecting their knowledge of one subject and those who discover synergies between the different fields. Duke cannot be motivated by interdisciplinarity alone. Perhaps this has always been a no-brainer to some, but it has taken me a long time to recognize the value in diversifying perspective.
I generally resent advice columns, so this will not conclude with trite recommendations like “take a cultural anthropology class for fun” or “study what you love.” You do you, and I will not think less of you for it. I am wearied by warnings that claim the humanities are disappearing and equally exhausted by calls for expanded STEM education. I want to forever continue learning for its own sake, but I have clearly violated this mantra when I overloaded for its own sake. I probably took my grandfather’s advice to some never-intended extreme. I now recognize I can be credentialist too but concurrently balance it with explorative learning. My education, however, will remain one that looks beyond deliverables. For that reason, I am not sure “knowledge in the service of society” fits me. It fits neither the credentialist nor the one who learns just to learn. I want Duke’s investment in me to reap returns for the world, but I also want the flexibility to take any class for its own sake.
Patrick Oathout is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Tuesday. Send Patrick a message on Twitter @PatrickOathout.
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