How to Make Academia Anything But "Academic"

How many times have you watched a sporting event in which one team has a large lead and the announcer says something such as "it's all academic now," meaning that the remainder of the game lacks importance because the outcome is a foregone conclusion? This usage of "academic" as if it's synonymous with the word "trivial" has some fair applications; however it can be misleading. In truth, academia pursued with passion is anything but "academic" in this respect, and may be the least trivial pursuit of your life. In this article you will learn how to ensure that your academic experience isn't so academic, after all. Read on to learn more.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Passion
• Good professors
• Quality texts
• Participation

1. Render Yourself Vulnerable to Passion
   
   This is easier said than done, as part of the difficulty lies in the very word "passion" itself. "Passion" is related to "passive" in that both English words are derived from Latin roots "passi" and "pati," which pertain to suffering and being acted upon. To suffer doesn't merely mean to "hurt", but it means to endure being acted upon. So passion is ultimately passive, something moves us from without. This runs a bit counter-intuitively to our contemporary notion that "passion comes from within." One way of reconciling this is to eschew the dichotomy, and look upon passion as a movement within that has some causation from without.
   
   So I've emphasized the vulnerability part in this step because you can't just "become passionate" in the way you might kick-start a motorcycle. You have to take down your guard, or if that sounds too dramatic, you have to open yourself to outside forces such as texts, ideas, historical figures, writers, artists, scientists, and professors. Opening yourself in academia, rendering yourself vulnerable, isn't all that different from doing so in love. It's no accident that for instances the fields of philosophy and philology ("old school" version of linguistics) contain "phil-" in them, coming from the Greek "philia," which is one of the ancient Greek varieties of love. Open yourself to seduction.
   
   Try to approach college in something of the way we approach kindergarten, with dilated eyes. Please see my early and experimental eHow article "How to View the World Aesthetically" for what is perhaps a more psychedelic approach to this step (linked at the bottom of the page under "Resources").
2. Pursue Quality Professors
   
   Once you've opted to take the plunge and render yourself vulnerable, you might as well take advantage of your vulnerability by pursuing professors who will penetrate this vulnerability. It's false bravado to make yourself vulnerable without there being a real risk.
   
   In my experience, especially very early experiences in academia, it's easier to go from being moved by a professor to being moved by a text or subject than vice versa. In other words, I think it's more likely that a professor will make a subject move you than it is that a subject will make a professor move you. For instance, even if you're a "science guy" (using the unisex "guy"), you might find yourself moved more by an "artsy" course that's taught by a dynamic professor than you would by a science course that's taught by a robot.
   
   Probably the best way to find out which profs are "hot" is to ask around. Another even more accurate way is to determine if they move you by studying under them, and then repeat profs that move you and steer clear of those who don't. A way that's been developed since after I went to school is the online student reviewing of professors. Back in my days at Michigan State University (1985-91) we had a cool guy named Mark Grebner who was well past his student days (one of the more famous hippie throwbacks around campus, also a county commissioner), and he published a pamphlet called "Grading the Profs", which was a prototype to what we have now online. Today I can totally relate to what Mark was then!
   
   Under "Resources" below I've provided links to some of the grading the profs type websites. Remember though that students can be the most biased evaluators.
3. Find Prof(s) Who Move You
   
   Then, the subject matter will become that much more intoxicating. Your choice of subject matter and texts of course will depend a lot on your choice of profs. Remember though that other things remaining equal, prof trumps text. For instance, you might generally prefer modern literature to Shakespeare, but a good prof teaching Shakespeare could turn you on to "The Tempest" more so than a lackluster prof teaching James Joyce might turn you on to "Ulysses".
   
   Your good professor's being moved by texts and subjects will rub-off on you and thus encourage you to render yourself vulnerable to the subject. If he/she is nearly orgasmic over Van Gogh, then I want it too! It's kind of like the ol' "I'll take three of whatever she's having", uttered when someone seems in a frenzy or on a high.
4. Participate
   
   Participation can be in class, at office hours, on one's own (delving into texts and writing), or preferably all three. This is the ultimate in rendering oneself vulnerable, because you're literally risking yourself (your self) in the subject. You're allowing a writer, a historical period, a scientific theory, an artwork to change your life!
   
   Through good professors teaching quality literature and/or intriguing subject matter, you will be seduced. You are the vulnerable maiden or young man, and academia is your seducer or seductress. Take the plunge now, because you may not be so free to do so later in life. Or, if you're a "non-traditional student," maybe you now have the liberty to be seduced that you either didn't have or chose not to take advantage of in your youth.
5. Conclusion
   
   It is in this affair with academia that you may find, as with first love, your life changed forever--thus rendering academia anything but academic.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't be afraid of intense or what may seem like bizarre professors (especially if you're coming to academia fresh from suburbia). Sometimes those are the best. Personal examples follow.
• I had a brilliantly eccentric professor, part of whose method consisted in taking on British-style airs of authority while spouting the near opposite of what was in the assigned text. Part of the reason - to get us to challenge authority (and do the reading). This was scary at first, but I ended up taking him time and again, both for the droll antics and for the education!
• Another prof was considered arrogant by some, but his scholarship and his energy for teaching were both impeccable. I took him several times as well. He liked to suck on Ricola cough drops, so I found them in my stocking one Xmas, courtesy of my dad remembering what I'd said about this professor.
• My favorite prof of all wasn't really that scary, unless maybe you're a staunch Christian or puritanical. But he was so into applying philosophy and psychology to daily life and human emotions, while also being a man's man instead of an ivory tower type, that I couldn't help but love him!
• Rendering yourself vulnerable doesn't mean turning a prof, subject matter or historical figure into an idol, but it's okay to do so temporarily (I think). I fell in love first with John Stuart Mill, then Arthur Schopenhauer, then Friedrich Nietzsche, then Vincent van Gogh, then R.D. Laing. Today they all remain influential figures to me but I don't worship them in the way that I may have for various periods of time. Sometimes you learn best by submersion and then resurfacing.