lessons from dc: education

Honestly, it's really tough to think of things to write these days, because when I'm not working or out finding food (hunter-gatherer? haha), I am usually sleeping. LOL and not only that, I'm not really sure in what direction I want to take this blog anymore...it's been so sparse in substance that I feel like the USAToday of blogs, rather than the NYTimes or something.

But anyway. So, it's been about two weeks in D.C. now, and I'm done with my first week of work (yes, I get Fridays off), and looking back on my time here so far (since I'm a very reflective person), I feel like I have amassed a lot of observations more than any sort of ability or trade from my job. So to make the reading easier (and somewhat shorter), I will break up the observations into separate themed blogposts. Thus:

1) Mad props to profs

At work, I've basically been sending out a ton of emails following up with professors/independent scholars after they've received their fellowship moneys three years ago, which necessitates me looking through a bunch of portfolios. And just looking at what kinds of projects they carry out, and thinking about the whole grant management process that I'll be aiding this summer, it makes me really appreciate what professors have to do for their entire lives.

To be a "successful" professor, it's not just about your teaching ability (as I'm sure many of you have already noticed) or connecting with students - but it's also about building up your reputation as a scholar, as someone who is specialized in a certain field of knowledge. It makes sense, right? After all, these are the people who are supposed to educate underlings so that some of them can also educate those underneath them and thus perpetuate the cycle - so, if we entrust them with our brains, shouldn't they be super knowledgeable about their areas?

But it's not just about knowing a lot, it's also about being innovative and thinking deeper. Because honestly, I always feel like we've thought through and analyzed just about everything that could be though through and analyzed on this Earth. But bringing their own take on topics that have been discussed and poked&prodded for decades or centuries or even millennia...it takes talent, especially in the humanities.

BUT not ONLY that, you have to be able to convince your peers that your take is worth listening to/reading about, hence the whole system of panels we have going on at grant organizations, where your colleagues sit around and pick apart your proposal for a book.

And nowhere is it more apparent in these pools of past fellows (aka grant winners) that it's about substance, not appearance - there are winners from Western Kentucky University and Princeton alike, and grants usually go to 1 out of every 10 applicants...so it's a pretty competitive pool.

And though all of the above may have been obvious even prior to my experiences so far, I'd say that it just verifies that sometimes, professors are severely underrated.

2) Where our education is going

Science is the religion of America. Of course, statistically speaking, Christianity is the dominant religion of the country, but it is also true that Americans put a lot of stock into scientific progress. That is where people get their answers to ailments, their sense of clarity and security, their reason for existence even.

$6.8 billion is given as a yearly budget for the National Science Foundation, while $160 million is given to the National Endowment for the Humanities (which is still the largest provider of grants to the development of the humanities). But I'm sure people still protest that this NSF budget is not quite enough, that science isn't allowed more liberties to do as it wishes, and that the budget towards the humanities is unnecessary. It makes sense in a way - in a life or death situation, you're going to want well-developed medicine as a result of scientific research, not a more in-depth understanding of Jane Austen or the rituals of an Amazonian tribe. So, people are going to want to put their tax money into something more "productive."

I don't know what to say about all this, actually. I want to say that no, the humanities make life interesting, so they are important. That literature moves hearts and stirs up action, and history teaches us about the fallacies of men so that we can carry on a better society...but as museums and newspapers lose money and the purchase of books dwindles (along with the uprise of Kindles), I don't know that our general society feels the same way, and it's difficult to see where we will be 50 years from now.