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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Prince Among Peasants or Prince Among Kings?

“Sort of going off that point, well not really, but in relation to that, based on what Kant would say, not me, but if we were to take the Socratic method and apply it to Einstein’s relativity, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath may reveal to be a work of art history but only if you interpret it that way.”

Okay, that is a little extreme but I am sure we have all heard this kind of thing before. Clipped, guarded comments meant to protect the author from any possible critique while simultaneously taking a long time to say nothing. Now, we are competitive academic people. Many of us have spent our whole lives competing for grades and GPAs, high honors and whatever other measures of intellect schools have come up with. At some point we realized that original, well-thought statements are too risky to take credit for, that even before putting an idea on the table we should make it as intentionally vague and defensive as possible, so as not to offend anyone.

Class registration recently came to a close and I wonder how many of us chose classes that we know we will be comfortable in. Isn’t that the point of college? To be the best in the class and get the highest grade? Well yes, but there is more to it than that. A grade can only take us so far and while the world eagerly awaits 4.0s and high honors and brilliant theses, all of us have faced moments in our academic career when the comfortable and the easy is not as intellectually stimulating as the B+ that took long nights of reading and preparation to achieve.

I am struck by how many of us walk into classes already measuring knowledge. We create hierarchies of the smart versus the struggling. Yet imagine the experience of walking into a class of your peers and admitting to yourself that you are the least knowledgeable of them all. Most of us (including me) would have difficulty coming to this conclusion, but can you imagine something more genuinely liberating? More exciting? After all, I would like to think we came to college not to reaffirm our own intellect, but to surround ourselves with people smarter than ourselves. That includes not only professors but our peers too.

When choosing classes and navigating our academic track here we face a similar dilemma. Do I succeed at the mundane or struggle with the arduous? Will my time here be spent coping with difficult material that is often both challenging and time consuming? I want to vouch for the second option, though we all know that jobs are not gained through mediocre grades. The world expects success and is typically not interested in the finer points. I can only counter that by saying if we are here for a GPA and a future position then we are only wasting time and someone else’s money.

We are told again and again to take risks and chances, and that is easy to do when you are not risking things we deem most important.  It is a much more difficult choice to risk a GPA hit in taking a class you know to be difficult. That risk is worth taking, it must be. Our liberal arts education becomes rapidly different if we can stop thinking of ourselves as the smartest person in the room and actually admit that we have something to learn in truly rigorous study. It’s no longer a matter of collecting credits and requirements, achieving GPAs and writing theses. It’s about what it should be from the beginning: improving ourselves. If there is one piece of advice I could tell my freshman self it would be the obvious: don’t be above anything, learn from everything and approach academia with the sincere intention to learn.

Whenever we sign up for a new class or take a new turn in our careers here, there is one vital question worth reflecting on. Do I want to be a prince among peasants or a prince among kings? It is not an easy question to answer and it has bothered me for some time. It stretches far beyond Middlebury. While being the best of the mediocre may do wonders for our ego, that perspective will never let us accomplish wonders. Yes, people may critique your comments and your perspectives, but at least we can have the dignity to say that idea was ours even though it was wrong. We will be wrong, a lot. If we are to make a mistake, however, I would rather it be my mistake and in a period of my life when I am supposed to be preparing for the world. I would rather encounter many challenges and many mistakes than a string of constant success.

 Artwork by TAMR WILLIAMS


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