INTRODUCTION

“Only dead fish swim with the flow of the stream”

-Gurnham Singh

Instructor at Outward Bound Malaysia

How do I start this book?  Probably not by asking that question, but it’s too late now.  That’s how my first book begins.  It begins like anything in life begins, by simply starting.  After that, it’s just a journey to the finish.  For me, writing this book has been a small part of my life journey.  The completion of this book is not the completion of me, nor is it the completion of my ideas.  As I’ve said, this is just the beginning.

            I spent one month in Cape Town, South Africa, typing this book, although the motivation for it has been built up for some time.  My real motivation for doing this book now, is to make right my college experience that I too often felt was wrong.  A year before writing this, May 2003, I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, but a feeling inside me that day told me something wasn’t right about that ceremony.  I started thinking a lot of things weren’t right about college.  I started thinking a lot of things weren’t right about life.

            So, after college, I found myself living in South Africa for 6 months, traveling and working for Outward Bound South Africa, an outdoor experiential education program that helps people, from disadvantaged township kids, to businessmen and women, to college seniors, (known in South Africa as “matrics”), realize their potential and develop life skills.  Before leaving for South Africa, I declared I would write a book about how I turned the page on college and started to see the world and make the most out of my own life.  Although it’s been a struggle to write this book, and as a first book, I’m sure there will be many criticisms, I have already made an important first step.  I am only 22, and simply by being persistent, something that has faced many challenges, you are now reading what was once an idea that I fell asleep thinking about, and a goal that was once written down on a page of my journal.  I’ve written a book!  Now, I’m on to climb the next mountain in my life, improving college education.

            Well…to whoever is reading this, a friend or a stranger, a student or graduate, teacher or administrator, anyone at all, let me now begin to tell you what to expect from this book.  This book is self-edited and self-published, so it might smack you as being “unprofessional.”  I try to make my writing easily understood and my ideas practical, so you might regard them as “simple.”  You may begin to view me as an idealist who needs to ground himself more in the real world, in the traditional ways of doing things.  To all those skeptics of my writing, just remember, this book you’re reading was born out of following an idealistic dream and being unconventional, and those are the things that will drive my ideas forward.

            So, it’s page two already.  You learn in college that the first page is the most important, but I promise those of you who have made it to page two, that the important stuff is still to come.  So sit tight, here we go…

“I WANT TO IMPROVE COLEGE EDUCATION”

            I want to improve college education.  In doing so, I hope to see students getting more from their time in school.  From there, I would expect graduates to get more from their lives after college, and as a result, to be able to contribute more to the world.  Ideally, improving college education will make life more enjoyable for 1000s of students, and when people are enjoying life more, well…maybe something of a domino effect of good things will happen.

            Just think of every time, you as a student, wanted to go out, meet a friend, go to a park, whatever.  You wanted to do something, but had to study.  You had to dedicate your time, to a test.  You were responsible for nothing else in life except the responsibilities of school.  Any outside obligations were somehow put second to school.  School was your job.

 One of my inspirations for starting to write about education and its effects on society, is a professor named Richard Smith.  He is the most outspoken professor I encountered at Washington University in St. Louis, as he speaks passionately about the role of college students in changing politics, and the way we treat our environment.  I admire him for his words, but as long as students are tied up with school, they won’t be able to fully concern themselves with real world issues.  The college experience is unique in that students have four whole years of freedom, making for a real opportunity to learn and make a difference in the world prior to beginning their working lives.  Our society, however, has decided that it would be best to encourage four more years of the same tiresome education, with which many of us grew restless during our high school years. 

            There is so much potential to improve the world, if we just gave our students the tools of empowerment and change.  Instead of steering them towards a degree, we should drive them towards finding their way in the world.  Instead of helping them solely through registration and academic success, we should provide them a base from which to understand the world, enabling them to play a big role in the society outside of the classroom. 

            Just think, most people go through some amount of school.  Afterwards, these people are forced into society; a society overflowing with problems and crises.  Economic.  Political.  Educational.  Global.  Environmental.  In order to address these and other societal issues, we need young people who are capable, energetic and motivated to dedicate their lives to addressing those issues.  That’s what school is supposed to do.  It’s supposed to prepare us, not just with knowledge, but with the tools to make a difference in the world.  Simultaneously, it should provide us with the inspiration to use that knowledge and those tools.  This way, young adults not only desire to make a real difference in the real world, but it is also practical for them to chase those dreams.

            I don’t believe any educational institution is structured to deliberately keep us ignorant, or to push students into lives where dreams are sacrificed for other goals such as money or prestige.  I believe most people want to do good with their lives.  I believe the people in charge of schools, and even the most-criticized politicians, want to do good with their lives, and want to see the same in young people. 

            The problem is therefore one of unintended consequences of traditional education.  While many Americans can be described as apathetic, ignorant, uneducated, unmotivated, we’re not inherently that way.  I could just have easily followed the path I was on, studied business, gotten a business job, made lots of money, got married one day, had kids, and then died.   That would have been perfectly acceptable.  I would have been celebrated by many in society.  I consciously traded that path for my own and actively pursued and continue to pursue experiences that make me a more complete person.  This road is by no means easy, but in my opinion, is the most rewarding.

            The idea of personal happiness is a very important idea to me, and it’s not as “out there,” or “hippy,” as it sounds.  There is a lot to be unhappy about in today’s world.   Following the news or politics, there is considerably more unpleasant news than good news being reported.  Similarly, another sign of the times is too many people today suffering from depression.  And by too many, having both a relative and a best friend attempt to take their own lives, I’d say that’s too many.  Everyday conversations reveal people stressed, disliking, or simply unenthused about either school or their jobs.  People talk about their passions, such as traveling, helping people, or spending time with family and friends, but all too often those important things in life get consumed by “everything else.”  The result is a culture and a society that is living with regret, and in a state of mixed happiness and pain.

            Let’s bring it right back to the practical level.  In the fall of 1999, I began my freshman year of college at Washington University in St. Louis (also known as Wash U., WU, WUSTL).  After 17 years, my life was exactly where I wanted it.  “Freedom!” Freedom from my parents, freedom of only 15 hours of school a week, freedom to meet new friends, new girls, drinking, hanging out till sunrise. 

            Oh yeah, and I wanted to learn something too.  I imagined sexy debates over really smart and important social and philosophical topics with other students and professors.  I actually began as a business major and believed my studies would lead me to running some sort of business by my senior year, or mastering the stock market, and making back my college tuition in just a few weeks.  I thought somebody would take interest in my writing, and develop me into the type of sophisticated writer that would impress my parents and their friends.  After all, I did what I was supposed to do in high school, and got accepted into an “elite university.”  By following that same logic, graduating from an elite school would automatically make me elite.  In hindsight, I could give my younger self some advise about college and life, but all the influences in my life up until that point from school, television, friends, family, books, etc., created the freshman in college that I was.  Advice alone would not have convinced me to ignore ideas of elitism, to realize that how I finished in four years was more important than how I started, or that I would one day have to stand on my own feet, and who I was would count infinitely more than my grades or the ranking of my school in the coveted US News and World Reports.

            It took me four years of college to experience what I wish I had known as a freshman.  The idea that passing classes and getting good grades at an elite university was actually a distraction from my need to learn about the world, by experiencing the world.  I think I always knew this idea was right, but “wasting time” contemplating this was time I should have spent focusing on getting good grades, passing my classes, and earning a college degree.  Gradually, I began living my life more and focusing on school less, but the psychological effects of lower grades and feeling inadequate made this difficult, and ensured that I continued to follow the path pre-determined by society.

            A major turning point for me was a semester spent studying abroad in London, England, at the University College of London.  I had only six hours of class a week for four classes, and had Wednesday thru Sunday off.  There was no required work except for final papers.  Despite scrambling for a few hours in computer labs and internet cafes (I wrote one paper in three hours while traveling in Seville, Spain), I ended up receiving a full semester of credits from Wash U.  I also learned more about politics, history, philosophy, business, and a range of other academic topics, than any previous semester of college, because I was learning these things while experiencing them as well.

            This semester also was my first opportunity to reflect on my 15 years of formal, traditional education up till then.  I realized I learned better from experience than in the classroom.  I realized I had only been learning with people my age, and with similar background and values as me.  Since I had so much free time abroad, and my classes ran only from January to March, I had plenty of time to travel Europe, exposing myself to a wide range of culture, scenery, and people.  For the first time in my life, I was learning, living, and having fun all at the same time.

            Back at Washington U. for my senior year, I developed an anger towards school.  As far as I was concerned, I was ready for the real world.  Despite the fact that I needed only five more classes over the course of my final two semesters of college to receive a degree, those classes were only distracting from my ability to develop other interests.  Making matters worse was I was required to satisfy distribution classes in certain departments, classes that would not make me more well-rounded as was the intent, or more prepared for the real world, or more qualified to a future employer.  They were classes I needed simply to pass in order to be done with university.  These were credits I needed to get my diploma, which for many, but not all lines of work, serves only as superficial qualification to getting a job.

            The more I reflected on why I was taking these last classes, and the exorbitant amount of money I was paying for each one, the more I realized it was too late to do anything else.  To risk alienating my readers through making a political analogy, it was like the invasion of Iraq.  I had invested too much time, effort, and money, to simply cut my losses and run.

            Although my heart wasn’t in it, I tried my hardest to just finish up what I had started my freshman year.  Making it harder was that all around me were college seniors whose hearts apparently weren’t in it either.  Then I realized how many people I’d met over my four years at college, whose hearts were never in it.  Students who attended class, studied for exams, and wrote papers not because they genuinely were interested or wanted to, but out of some sort of obligation.  Obligation to parents maybe, or to the pressures of society.  Whatever caused it, students continued to do things not out of joy, but out of some hope that their reward for joylessness now, would be joy in the future. 

For many, this feeling of obligation towards unsatisfying ends, becomes a lifelong problem.  Many people will take jobs that make them more miserable than anything, but when asked about their work, they say, “it pays really well,” as if there will be a time in the near future when they will be able to use that money to do the things they actually enjoy in life.  Realizing this led me to decide that for me to ever be truly happy in life, I would have to free myself from those obligations that left me hollow inside. 

Entering my last semester of college, I was down to only two more classes.  In order to graduate, I was obligated to pass one more science class, and one more political science.  Following common practice, I signed up for what I believed to be the easiest classes to pass.

The science class had to do with the evolution of the Earth and the universe.  At first, I thought it could be quite interesting to learn about topics like the Big Bang and the origins of life.  In fact, I’m still quite interested in these topics.  However, the class soon turned more towards science and math, and my interest disappeared.  Suddenly, I was in a class of no interest to me, and I had no choice but to pass it.

            Something similar happened in my political science class.  The class was about public dissent of the government in the 1950’s and 60’s.  With the war in Iraq beginning, I was interested in how the anti-government movement back then would compare to the movement today.  However, when the focus turned to history, names, dates, and documents, I was done for.  The lectures, readings, and assignments were no longer about what interested me.  There were now two classes I was stuck in, and despite the shift in lectures, from topics I was interested in knowing more about, to topics that couldn’t hold my attention past the first two minutes of class, I was stuck to attend the lectures, pass both the science and the political science class, and graduate.

            This didn’t happen.  (insert laugh here)  It couldn’t.  I even respected everyone’s advice and dragged myself out of bed to attend lectures.  But I couldn’t drag my mind to class.  My mind kept asking, “Why?”  “Why do I have to be here?”  “Why must I sit in a classroom when there’s a whole world I could be exploring?”  “Why does a degree hold so much value if a student didn’t enjoy what they studied, if they are likely to forget most of what they learned, if they are more likely to find a job out of networking than actually having a degree, or if a student was merely crafty enough to pass classes without really studying or learning anything at all?”

            And so began my career as a writer.  My frustration had no other outlet.  I would attend class simply for material.  “Silent classes with sleeping students.”  “Disinterested students discussing drinking”  “From failing classes, Dan finds freedom…”

            I failed both classes, but not before having five articles published in the school newspaper, Student Life. While I was completely neglecting my obligation to my two courses, I was putting a world of energy into my pursuit of writing.  I was hardly able to sleep most nights, completely consumed with writing, re-writing, thinking, and re-thinking what was wrong and right about college, what was wrong and right about life.  When I wasn’t writing, I was spending my time building some of the best friendships I’ve ever had, something I will never regret.

            Failing these two classes, however, resulted in me having to share this disappointment with my family at graduation, and having to pay out even more money to sit through even more class during summer school. This was an awful experience.  In fact, it sucked.  Despite this, my failure has become my opportunity to write about my recent past, and that is both personally redeeming, as well as helpful in highlighting the questions I began asking as a student.  “Why?”  “Why is school this way?”  “Why can’t it be different?”  Until this question has been satisfactorily addressed, I will continue to play the role that I actually enjoy playing, the role that brings me so much personal joy and satisfaction, the role of asking, “Why?”

            OK.  Back to failing my two courses.  The science course I tried to get by on by studying old exams available online.  That gave me some hope, but I wasn’t able to fully answer questions about Einstein’s 4^th dimension of time.  As a result, for the first time in 16 years of school, 17 including kindergarten, I was deemed to need further education in summer school.

            Failing the political science class, however, was done with a little bit more class.  There were no tests to fail in this class, only papers.  The usual approach I took to papers I wasn’t in the least inspired to write, was to decipher what the question was looking for, find all the relevant passages in the books, and put them together in some coherent way.  By spending time and effort demonstrating my ability to completely bullshit my way through a paper, with the only concern being to pass, I had managed to maintain a respectable 3.0 GPA through college.  With rare exception, I never had discussions with professors or other students about the actual question behind the assignment.   Usually, discussion was limited to, “What does the professor want to read?” and that’s what we’d write.  When papers were returned, the conversation would also be limited to, “What did you get?”  Sadly, the only time to approach a professor after they returned a paper, was in an effort to receive a higher mark, not to discuss the material that wasn’t fully understood.

            So, after being assigned one of my last college papers, I decided I’d proven myself as a bullshit artist enough.  I figured, I’m on this journey in life from A to B, birth to death, and I can’t afford to waste another moment on bullshit.  So, I found an old paper from a friend, put my name on it, and handed it in.  I was fearless.  When my paper was the only one not to be returned, I remained that way.

            As requested, I met with my professor.  He explained how the paper I had submitted was for a previous year’s question, and included books from the previous year’s reading list.  When I was finally asked if the paper was my own, I had no qualms about saying, “No.”  My professor appeared a little surprised, and then asked me, “Why’d you do it?”  So I explained to him what I’ve explained to you already.  “I’m tired and frustrated with college.  I couldn’t bring myself to bullshit another paper that I wasn’t interested in writing.”  The funny thing was, my professor sympathized with me.  Despite the hope he gave me, my professor was obligated to submit the case to the Wash U. academic integrity committee.  Although this was the responsible thing to do, by leaving my fate to a small committee of students and faculty, my hopes of sliding through this class, as I had so many others, looked slim. 

            While the rest of my school and friends were celebrating and getting plastered during the traditional end of school party called W.I.L.D. (Walk In, Lay Down), I was in a suit, presenting my case to the academic integrity committee.  And what was my case?  Well, with my back to the wall, I decided to write the paper myself.  After presenting this, I was then peppered with questions about what I felt about plagiarism.  I didn’t know what to say.  Were they looking for textbook answers?  Was there actually anything I could have said that would have prevented me from automatically failing the course?  Was there any purpose to this whole hearing, or was it just something they felt they were obligated to do? 

            I knew what I had to say.  My bullshitting days were over.  “I’ve been a student here for four years, and I can assure you there’s a bigger issue at stake than how I should be judged for submitting a friends’ paper.  The issue isn’t simply academic integrity, it’s intellectual integrity.  Are we really only concerned if someone hands in their own work, and not concerned with the number of papers and assignments turned in without any serious thought at all except, ‘I need to turn this paper in if I want to graduate.’  Let me tell you, I spent my first two years in the b-school (business school) and the comments students in the b-school make about what a joke their education is, is a serious question of intellectual integrity.”  To this last comment, one of the committee members, a math professor, began to giggle.

            I tried to explain the real reasons for my action.  “If I was really trying to cheat other students, I would’ve turned in an A plus paper.  I handed in the wrong paper, which deserves an F anyways.  There’s clearly other issues at hand besides me being a deceptive student.”  I stated my failure in my science class as another example.  “I’ve been punished enough being forced to sit inside a classroom for four years.  I’ve even gone to see the school therapist about it, but at this point in my college career, the only advice I’ve been given is to ‘suck it up and finish.’  Just let my professor grade my new paper that I wrote.  He’s even agreed to mark me down one grade as it is.  Give me the opportunity to pass, to be done with school, and to start doing something with my life.”

            My professor, who involved the academic integrity board out of obligation, had always given me the impression he would give me a second chance.  Even when the committee voted to give me an automatic failure for the course, I was still hopeful that my professor, the one with the final say, would follow his own conscience and pour some sympathy and understanding my way.  Despite, “getting myself into my own mess,” the professor decided that by turning the matter over to the academic integrity committee in the first place, he was also surrendering the final decision to them.

            So here I am.  21 years old.  16 year in school.  An exciting future plan to work as a camp counselor at a summer camp, get involved with Outward Bound, and travel to South Africa.  And for the first time ever, part of my summer would take place inside a classroom.  You have no idea how outraged I was.  Yes, I was fuckin’ outraged.  This was some backwards shit.  There’s no nice way to put how I felt.  I broke down and cried.  I smashed plates in my apartment.  I unsuccessfully tried to appeal on the grounds that there was not one college senior on the committee, not one person who might truly be able to understand my situation not in simple black and white terms.  I considered not even bothering to finish up my degree.  How could I possibly drag myself to more school after all I’d been through?  What was the lesson the school was teaching me?  Obviously, I got the point that cheating wasn’t right.  But what else were they teaching me?  Was it, “do as your told and follow-in-line if you want to get anywhere in life.”  Was it, “just pass your classes like you’re supposed to, this is how it’s been done since before your time?”  I can accept now my failing those two classes, but the lack of understanding left me dumbfounded about college even further.  Unless I re-told the story as I am now, future students might also graduate wondering, “Why was college this way?” 

And here’s the kicker.  Holding me accountable by requiring me to take two more classes, regardless of what value they might hold for me.  How absurd!  The committee probably felt they did the right thing.  But to me, their failure to see the big picture of how bad a job college was doing for me, kept me up at night.  It still does…

            I registered for two summer school classes.  They met everyday, three hours a day, for three weeks.  I wouldn’t call these optimal environments for learning, especially not at $1,000+ a class.  The science class was about energy and the environment, but like most classes, I’ve already forgotten almost all of the content.  I remember the tests were multiple-choice and open-book, so I could pass without blinking an eye.  I also remember commenting to a friend of mine about my final paper, which was on photovoltaic cells (solar energy), “Photovoltaic cells is probably the best topic I could write about, just think how long my paper will look from writing photovoltaic cells over and over.”  The other class was titled Films and Politics, which was literally a movie screening class that I could have done at home for the cost of renting a few videos from Blockbuster Video.  There was no lecture or discussion.  The exams were subjective, and about the general content of the movie.  Politics was never mentioned once.

            I found just enough energy to get through summer school, and by August 2003, I had the prized, elite diploma I had come for, four years ago.  When I finished those last classes, I don’t think anybody in the world knew what I’d been through.  Nobody had any reason to know or care about how I finished college.  Except me.  The feeling of freedom that I felt from being done with my college education that had become such madness in my life, that freedom from outdated obligations to school, is a freedom I have not surrendered since, and a freedom I hope to help others obtain.

            I share my story to expose you to what I believe are some of the ills of how our culture views and treats higher education, as well as to help you understand a bit about why I’m writing this book.  I write this book today, not simply to highlight problems, as everyone loves to do.  I’m writing this book with a positive view of how we can improve education, and help thousands of students who are surely having experiences that closely resemble mine.  And I want to prepare you.  This book is about a whole lot more than improving college.  It’s about how to change things, since ideas and reality are two very separate things.  It’s also about not knowing all the answers, but always working to find them. 

Another reason this book needed to be written was because along with fun, life has its serious side, and analyzing the education and experiences we get in college is necessary to ensure people’s lives are full of meaning and excitement long past the end of college.  I wouldn’t have had the idea to write this book if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to discover the wonderful educational experiences I have had since college.  The experiences I’ve had as a student on an Outward Bound course, as an instructor for Outward Bound South Africa, the experiences I’ve had traveling beautiful South Africa, and the experiences I’ve had working as a summer camp counselor the past two summers.  It is with a sweet taste in my mouth, not the sour one that concluded my time in college, that I write this book. 

I have divided the book up into four sections.  The first pages you will read are the articles I wrote while still a student at Wash U, in the student newspaper, Student Life.  They will give you some background of my thoughts about higher education, the transition from college to the real world, and reflections on life, past, present, and future.

Section 2, titled “Bubble Bobbles: Problems Inside the College Bubble,” introduces what I believe are troubling signs of the direction higher education is taking.  Reading the articles and comments I’ve included should hopefully be enough to show people that we can and need to improve America’s colleges and universities, as well as the entire culture surrounding those years. 

Section 3, “Blowing Bubbles: Education, Life, and the Real World,” will hopefully show the depth and distance to which the problems of higher education have spread, and to which higher education needs to be improved.  It’s not simply a matter of education, but a matter of our culture and way of life that needs to be re-examined and improved.   

            Section 4, “The Bubble Bursts: Improving America’s Colleges and Universities through Innovative Educational Reform,” discusses ideas I have for exactly how we should approach improving higher education in America, as well as the approaches of two universities who have found their own methods of providing innovative education.  I then go further by proposing alternatives to going to college, proposing a college of the future, as well as a possible Outward Bound course that would help fill in some of the missing pieces from higher education today. 

            If any confusion remains after these four sections, I’ve added a special section, an interview with the author, to help clear things up and introduce a few more ideas for further discussion.  Finally, the conclusion, an introduction to what actions will take place when the book ends.

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