Isn't it funny how goals can take on a mind of their own? For example, you can go to the store to get quarters for laundry, only to remember some groceries you needed, which makes you think of a movie you wanted to rent, and at the video store you see that cute someone from class and end up with a date for Thursday night.
Goals are notorious for seeming straightforward at first, then revealing themselves to be startlingly complex once you're waist deep in fulfilling them.
College is a perfect example. I assumed that upon completing my master's degree, I would know all the answers to every question I'd ever had and be able to solve all the troubles of the world with my vast research-backed knowledge. I assumed I would be able to stand tall among the intellectuals of the world - my arms spilling over with facts and truth - and have utterly infallible mastery of all things in my subject area. Isn't that why they call it a "master's" degree?
Actually, quite the opposite happened: I am now less certain of many things.
Whereas previously I was confident in my stances on various issues, now second guessing is a more of a common practice for me. Whereas I used to be confident in the power of my assumptions to explain people's behavior, analysis of the interaction between situational and personal variables has replaced these assumptions.
In other words, unlike Clarissa, I can't explain it all.
It used to be so easy. Mental shortcuts, faith and judgmental heuristics were all I needed to be certain of things.
When we are children, we don't argue with our moms or dads when they justify a punishment with, "because I said so" - questioning a statement like that only invites further punishment. Kids just don't say "On what do you base your moral authority, and how do you respond to the fact that my version of morality is different from yours? And are you qualified to make these judgments?"
For some, it is enough to respond to contentious moral and intellectual questions with statements such as, "the Bible says so" or "that's how things have always been."
It's convenient to use such statements, because they don't require much time or effort to rigorously prove, and they reflect larger social institutions that are less susceptible to questioning. But they often don't get at the nuts and bolts of an issue, explain specific phenomena or justify further curiosity and research.
Abandoning such statements leaves one open to uncertainty, and squaring with uncertainty isn't something human beings do well. We want to know what will happen when we die. We want to make sense of people who don't act as we do. We want to understand why bad things happen to us or to those around us. When we can't answer these things easily, we get anxious, and we think even the flimsiest representations of certainty feel better than plausible uncertainty.
Don't misunderstand - I have made scores of academic discoveries in college, learned a great many fascinating facts and figures, and I can speak and debate intelligently about many more subjects than I could after graduating high school. Added employability and life experience are also among the pluses of a college education.
But college isn't a place to blindly show up and be given answers. It's where you learn to use critical thought and analysis - the tools of inquiry - to creatively cultivate your own solutions.
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