On Classroom Etiquette at College

A physician professor and med students learn a technique of Osteopathic manipulative medicine at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Vallejo, California, United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Taking courses at a university can be exciting and wonderful but it can also be confusing and stressful. There are many things you are learning to adjust to and you can easily lose focus and make mistakes that will create unnecessary difficulties further down the line. It can really help if you plan ahead and try to stay organized so that you don't get overwhelmed and make unforced errors that will only increase your stress and distract from your learning.

If you've never attended a class at a college or university there are some things you can benefit from knowing before you begin. Some of it may seem like common sense but you might be surprised at how often these simple things can be neglected and the problems that can cause. There is always going to be someone who stumbles over these things, so make sure that it isn't you.

Let's start with one of my favorites.

Why academia doesn't matter

An intellectual contrasted with a prize-fighter; by Thomas Nast ca. 1875 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why academia doesn't matter? Am I really writing to you about why it doesn't matter? Yes and no.

An old trick that many people learn is to invert or flip a question or problem to better appreciate and dig into it. That is to say, by thinking about why something doesn't matter can help in appreciating if and how it does.

There are many finely written articles and essays the perennially appear about how the academy is under assault by corporatization, the bloat of university versions of mid-level managers, and those with degrees specifically in higher education who wind up in the administration of said institutions of higher learning. Not to mention the problems with student loans, ballooning tuition, and an anti-intellectual political climate associated with certain strands of conservative ideology.

These erudite publications talk about the value of a life of the mind, of having centers of intellectual freedom, and the oft neglected core values and insights so important to human development offered by unappreciated areas of academic inquiry such as the humanities. After all, philosophy and the arts can be considered the grandparents of mathematics and science (whether they be physical, natural, or social). And who can deny the importance of cultivating an appreciation of an examined life, of beauty, of ethics? Especially given the ready examples of psychological stress, anomie, superficiality, and corruption which haunt and seem to point to a hollowness in our societal soul that reality television, celebrity gossip, and hateful rhetoric masquerading as political discourse cannot fill.

These are all solid observations that, while not all irrefutable or uncontroversial, can and have been argued forcefully and eloquently.

So what are the arguments, then that academia doesn't matter?