It has been dawning on me recently that I’m a college student. Not in the immature-stupid-irresponsible meaning of “college student” but in the academic-inquisitive-analytical meaning. Some of you may note that it is my third year in college, silly, and I should have realized this by now. But I contend that only this year, and really only since the end of last semester, have I really started to figure it out.
The whole issue was brought to mind today after a discussion over the definition of heresy (see the next post), in which I took a reasonably well argued position. As Brett pointed out to me, in one conversation I managed to work in illustrations, examples, or principles from Theology, Economics, International Relations, and Philosophy. After the conversation it occurred to me that there was no way that I would have been able to articulate such a coherent position on a topic during freshman year. Or even most of sophomore year, for that matter.
Another piece of the emerging puzzle is an increasing number of professors that I know well. I now routinely say hi to virtually every professor in two of my three departments and interact more closely with a number of them. Yesterday I dropped in on one economics professor, who I am not currently taking a class with, and had him reexplain the average utility vs. marginal utility interpretation of the tragedy of the commons (perhaps I should update the Wikipedia article with that information).
Today the college had the annual “town hall” where students can ask the college president anything they want. (This does not, of course, guarantee that he will actually answer the question instead of dancing around it.) My public policy class has been reading William Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden and considering the impact of Western aid on the rest of the world. As our college recently signed on to the ONE campaign, several of us thought it would be interesting to ask the president about the college’s stance. I volunteered to ask the question, which ended up, after some tweaking, along the lines of:
In the past few decades Western nations have spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid. Some economists, like Jeffrey Sachs, believe that such aid is essential for economic growth, but others, such as William Easterly, believe it can contribute to zero or negative growth rates. In view of the college’s desire to be more proactive in such matters, and the decision to join the ONE campaign, which advocates an increase in aid of 1% of the U.S. budget, in what ways might the college want to see such aid spent in regard to poverty, AIDS, and health work.
I wasn’t totally satisfied by the answer I received (watch for a later post on the issue), but that’s not the point. The point is that this is just another example of becoming more academically and analytically involved. In the same class the question came from, I now routinely pull together ideas from a variety of economists and synthesize them in order to make a point during discussions.
Perhaps the point is: I’m learning things and I can actually tell it now. As with many activities, you don’t always notice the results for a while. But for my studies, the results are showing up now.
On the other hand, maybe I’m just particularly happy this week because I have (in all probability) secured an internship for the summer, have got a house to live in next year, and have been spending a lot of time with a certain dormouse. But still, it’s good to be a college student.
