I'm glad that Nell Painter found good things in those classes, but as someone in their 40s who has come out of academia, the idea of studying at a college again is a bit strange to me.<p>Like, I quit a PhD program between passing my quals and defending a dissertation, but even with my "incomplete" education, I feel like I have enough authority to learn whatever I want to learn outside of the framework of academia.<p>For instance, the lesson about being able to just erase 10 hours worth of work... that's something that all of us who have ever worked on about any large project probably already know-- as a writer, I suspect that the author of this piece already knew that lesson, even if she hadn't felt authorized to apply it to a field where she wasn't credentialed.<p>So I wonder about the value of returning to an undergraduate education. As a musician, I still learn new instruments, but my education has gone from getting weekly lessons and being in beginner bands to playing low-rent shows and getting single lessons from masters (Floyd Domino, if you are reading this, I will call you back Monday).<p>After we have a good humanities-based education, I wonder if we ought to be able to teach ourselves.<p>I'm curious what other folks thoughts about that are: it's not that with a good education in "learning how to study" I don't ever need input from masters, but more that I'm skeptical that I'd need an entire undergraduate course to motivate me to carry out enough work to learn a craft.
One of my favorite acquaintances from my days in school was a much older student from South Korea who often told stories of his time in mandatory military duty patrolling the DMZ, including a harrowing story of nearly setting off an international incident because he mistook a wild pig for a North Korean soldier and set off a grenade.<p>Definitely a series of experiences completely outside my context. I found it was important to hear about his experiences, and age difference obviously plays a part in facilitating this. Another South Korean classmate turned 18 in school and got shipped back to the DMZ. He didn't get hurt or anything, but I don't think he ever made it back to school in the states, which is a shame.
I wish we were in a world where we wouldn't associate schooling with childhood or young adulthood. I feel like this would be easier if we, as a society, weren't pushing young adults to enter colleges and universities and turning them into job training programs and resume-bait.