How I Almost Became an Academic Superstar

My academic star began to soar in high school, once I was freed from the rote inanities of multiplication tables, subject-verb agreements, and the other small-minded preoccupations of my middle school teachers.

According to Mr. Poor, my English teacher, my sophomore paper on The Catcher in the Rye, was unmatched for its "scope, depth, expression, and sincerity.”

"Holden Caulfield is confronted by many alleged teen-age problems. Personally, I have never been bothered by many of the problems presented. There are a few, however, that were mentioned which have troubled me, one of which is the relationship between males and females..."

By my senior year, my teachers were eating out of my hand. By then, I had mastered the use of the colon in my essay titles, as in my standard-setting senior paper "Albert Camus: a Study in Individualism." My senior paper was also proof positive that a little heartfelt angst is a sure-fire way to get an A:

"In a world that grows more and more "absurd" and incomprehensible, man's search for meaning in life and in the very fact of existence has become increasingly difficult. Many modern philosophers have accepted resignedly the terrible solitude and helplessness of man in a universe that doesn't seem to care whether he exists or not."

Which modern philosophers, you wonder? Well, to be truthful, I actually only knew of one other allegedly famous modern philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, and I'd gotten the gist of Jean Paul's ideas from an Atlantic Monthly article I'd found in the school library.

But never mind that the foundation of my thesis was a trifle shaky. What counted were my insights, and these popped effortlessly out of my 17-year-old brain like sparkling jewels. By the time my senior prom rolled around there was no holding me back. I had aced the SATs, been early-accepted to Princeton, and had my name engraved on the school's math trophy. The future stretched before me like a golden uncharted landscape and I was primed to take it by storm. I was young, brilliant, innovative, filled with limitless potential, and as surely destined for greatness as the day follows the dawn.

But unfortunately that was then. In the following years, it gradually sank in that I had been wrong on nearly all counts. (I was right on that part about being young.) My first minor setback occurred during my freshman year, when the morons on the Princeton English faculty inexplicably failed to be dazzled by my freshman essay (You show a hint of promise, but you need to work much harder on your writing.)

But the seminal moment came a couple of years later when, having walked out of an impossibly difficult physics exam with my tail tucked between my legs, I noticed a wall of portraits of former Princeton physics majors who had won Nobel prizes. Nothing like a course in quantum mechanics to bring one down to earth.

Until that point, I had never really appreciated what a liberal education is all about. A pseudonymous commentator for the Chronicle of Higher Education, put it this way: “A liberal arts education… is about the recognition, ultimately, of how little one really knows, or can know. A liberal arts education, most of all, fights unmerited pride by asking students to recognize the smallness of their ambitions in the context of human history….”

Humility isn't a very fashionable topic in academia. Sure, we all know that pride goeth before a fall, but that means not gloating over trouncing the other team, or lording it over your colleague in the next office because you got the promotion and she didn't. Besides, preaching humility is the sort of moralizing done by, well, preachers, and not by college professors.

But here the preachers have got it right and we should listen to them. True enough, we academics need to empower our students, inspire them to greater heights, engage their passions, and so forth, and obviously we shouldn't go around gratuitously popping their balloons.

However, unless our students temper their dreams with realism they will never achieve them. Humility is an important educational goal because it is the bedrock of a liberal education. It is the quality that keeps us from overvaluing our own opinions and discounting the opinions of those who know more than we do.

There are a lot of misconceptions over this point. I read a report the other day by the American Association of University Professors that asserted that the “core of a liberal arts education” is for students to question decisions and insist on taking an active part in decision-making at their colleges.

I respectfully disagree. That’s confusing criticism with critical thinking. Anyone can be a critic. By contrast, critical thinking is a habit of mind that only grows out of a deep understanding of the contributions of others and an acute awareness of the limitations of one's own abilities. Critical thinking isn't so much learned as assimilated. It is a skill never mastered, but only improved upon.

I’m not suggesting that students shouldn’t be encouraged to form opinions and shouldn’t engage with important school or societal issues. They should. But they also should be encouraged to understand that complex problems do not have simple answers.

And that goes for the rest of us in higher education as well. Next time we sound off on a topic we know little about, or cloak ourselves in moral certainty, or voice unsupported assertions, or jump to unstudied conclusions, or stake out doctrinaire positions on complex issues, we should know we're setting a bad example for our students.

Even if we have tenure or, more accurately, especially if we have tenure, we need always to keep in mind that that there is no easy path up the side of the mountain. And, like that allegedly famous guy who kept pushing up the big rock, only to have it roll back again, we should know the mountain’s summit will always be out of reach.