We worry an awful lot about our school’s image. You hear concern among students when they talk about friends at Harvard or Yale (the unspoken question being, how do we compare?). You see it in administrative reports when we compare our grade inflation to Princeton’s. You may, in fact, have just read it in several columns recently published in the Voice and the Hoya. As Fr. James Schall sees it, we focus too much on careers and extracurricular activities and appreciate the “life of the mind” too little.
I transferred to Georgetown, so I have firsthand experience in a very different academic and social environment. Not for a moment do I think we party too hard or suffer intellectually because we drop the word “Beirut” more often in reference to beer than to Lebanon. Do I have friends who should probably spend more time locked away in Lauinger and less time at the Tombs? Sure I do. But I also have plenty of friends who would do well to spend more time at Tombs and less time in a fourth-floor cubicle.
I know that there are many students who are more worried about their careers than their education. And admittedly, there are a few too many who see the backs of GERMS ambulances late on Saturday nights. But no matter where you go to college, whether its Georgetown or Georgia State, you will find students for whom the love of learning is less a part of their daily lives and more an annoying administrative slogan. I’d love to see every student act on an insatiable intellectual curiosity, but I’d also love to play forward for the basketball team.
The problem is defining what exactly constitutes a life of the mind. For some, it seems, this means constant attention to study and work, building your life around your classes.
I doubt Georgetown students have this in mind for one very simple reason: life, of the mind or otherwise, is hardly fulfilling when everything revolves around the term paper you have due at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Every now and then I’m inspired by a professor or a book I’m reading in class, but even more often I’m inspired by someone or something outside the classroom.
It’s possible that leading a life of the mind can include more than just slavish adherence to our academic obligations. I’m of the same opinion as Mark Twain: never let your studies get in the way of your education. There’s a massive world out there to experience, and hiding in a library or a classroom can drag your mind down rather than lift it up.
There’s a thrill worth feeling at the Verizon Center, a sense of camaraderie worth knowing with your friends (it was Aristotle who wrote in Nicomachean Ethics that friendship is not only necessary but beautiful) and an inspiration worth embracing at an Obama rally that you simply cannot find in an academic environment. And these are often the things that teach us the most.
Living a life of the mind means finding and embracing the lesson in everything you do, great and small. And what we do while we are wily undergraduates remains with us forever. Our first goal should not be to cram our heads with assigned readings or stress out over exams. It should be to live life to the fullest while we still can, and to astound ourselves in the process.
