Do you ever hear about a historical figure and can’t help but compare yourself to the legend, wondering how such a singular character, unlike anyone else, could come to be? (And wondering if you’ll ever be as interesting?)
Enter Diogenes. The Greek cynic who was said to live in a barrel, accompanied only by his loyal dog, and who occasionally wandered the streets of Athens shining a lamp, searching for a “real person” or sometimes I’ve read it as, an “honest man” among the cosmopolitans. Diogenes was from Sinop, the peninsular town I’m living in this month, where stray dogs run the streets fixed and vaccinated and taken care of by the locals. Perhaps, we muse, in homage to this man.
I walk by the statue (pictured above) twice a day and think a bit about him. Not that I know too much about Diogenes, but rather I think about his life memorialized in this city and in philosophy classrooms everywhere as a ringing reminder that I’m still not sure what to do when I graduate. Often times, I hear this question from prospective students’ parents, “How do you choose what to focus? Can you focus? What happens if you never do?” There’s nothing wrong with these questions, but the best answer for a student who is really considering Evergreen (or already decided) requires a shift of perspective.
At Evergreen, a good pattern you could say happens is students spend their first two years exploring and their last two specializing. But many students, some friends of mine included, spend their first two years super focused and their last two exploring. People like me claim to be focused but really they spend all their time moving in and out of various disciplines, doing a lot of exploring, but also taking care to produce some key projects that show focus in a particular area. Other people do it all, and end up with no focus at all.
Those are the patterns and that looks good to outsiders, or people who will not actually experience this education. For those in it, the truth is much more complicated and it comes down to questioning the broader assumption: why do you want to focus, and should you? Why should you? Why shouldn’t you?
I came to college and have pursued higher education because I love it. I love school, research papers, readings, projects, all of it, I dig it. I have friends who have come to college to get out of their low-tier jobs. They don’t really have an academic focus, they have a career focus and they are much more interested in coming to college for skills and connections and opportunities. I have other friends who have gone to college for a specific field you need degrees to work in, like medicine or music or museum studies. So, the wealth of reasons to come in the first place are numerous and none are ever the same. Sometimes, people just come here to find themselves, the learning is secondary.
The truth is, your opportunities at Evergreen to study exactly what you want to study, no restrictions, makes you focus on yourself. You are your focus. Your future rests in your own hands. As a student, you start to think about questions of focusing in this way. You wonder why you came in the first place. You wonder if you want to pursue a field as a job, or a craft, or a hobby as you’re doing it. And in the end, whether you did 6 quarters or 1 of intensive work in one particular area of interest, when you graduate you may have been lucky enough to have it mostly figured out. Your exploration and your focus, in whatever ratio you did them, will leave you with indicators for which way to go next.
I believe that not many people graduate college with such a clear and deep understanding of the differentiations between their dreams, their abilities, their passions, and their skills. Most people just graduate with a license to something rather narrow, rather too focused. For some people, I can’t lie, that works. But on the whole, I would question that model of living. A college degree is not a license. It should mean more and be more than that, otherwise what was the point? So what I would say to the student who feels confused about the breadth and depth of an Evergreen education is that you do not have to have it figured out and patterned neatly into a perfect packet. Life is not a checklist. Your experiences with your hands, which you will have so much opportunity to do at Evergreen, will do more for you than tests and texts and papers ever will. Just think, for five minutes, about Diogenes wandering the city, looking for an honest person.
Sure, he was being sarcastic and curmudgeonly. But it speaks to a greater desire within us for the authentic and the unaffectatious. I would like to think that Diogenes may at lease pause over the Evergreen student. Whether they are absolutely sure if their niche or not, I think generally we try to know ourselves and be honest with what we find.
Obviously, archaeology has gotten me in the philosophic mood. In other news from the water front, the trenches have all been uncovered at our site and we will commence with digging tomorrow, bright and early! Turkish is still beyond my understanding, but strangely enough it reminds me in some ways to Irish Garlic (thanks Sean Williams) and I have hope I’ll soon be able to remember how to say “How are you?”. Our site was visited by a beautiful tan and black dog today, who took a nap in the shade mid-morning. And, tonight I learned a little about pseudomorph, where sometimes corroding metals which have a organic material pressed against them corrode and mold to the shape of the organic, which after hundreds or thousands of years disintegrates, leaving behind (sometimes) only the perfect mold. Even the absence of data is data in this world, and I love it! As my high school English teacher would say, “Good stuff!!”