academia - Eric Attica

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about.

In my culture, knowing is a virtue. It’s a symbol of power to know things (presidents and professors and CEOs are expected to be in the know), and an embarrassment to be ignorant.

Have you ever pretended to know something, or have seen something? I’ve said I’ve seen Psych, even though I’ve only seen two episodes all the way through, and I’ve definitely pretended to know the story of Orpheus in Greek mythology. What if I asked you right now why the sky is blue? Do you know? Would you pretend to know?

As a scholar-in-training, it’s my job to know things. But I can only learn things if I admit I don’t know them. Yesterday I realized that I really don’t know how rivers work. Where does the water actually come from? Why doesn’t the water run out? Why is it easier to grow things around rivers? Dumb questions—anyway, I found and read an article for grades 5–12 about how rivers work, and now I think I understand the world a little better.

It’s the ancient question: Why was Socrates wise? The prophetess says there is no man wiser than he, and Socrates decides to try find a wiser person in order to test her words. “I know that I have no wisdom, small or great,” he says. He talks to all occupations of society and discovers that that they are all less wise than they think they are, and realizes that he his wise not because his wisdom is great, but because he accurately knows that he knows nothing.

Ignorance may not be a virtue, but being honest about one’s ignorance is. What do you think? Have you asked any “dumb questions” lately?

Because everyone needs a smile in their life, and academics are just comedians without formal training.

[Currently I’m in the middle of a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, and I have about two and a half years to go. The program is mostly theory-oriented, but I’ll also get certification as an English teacher by the end of it. This semester, my coursework included introductory phonetics and phonology, introductory morphology and syntax, Japanese, as well as a bit of music.]

Josh: “Any help with this?”
Professor: “You can do it.”
Josh: “Yay.”

Professor: “Yeah, we’ve got a nouniness continuum.”

Professor: “I had to look up what ‘Whovian’ is.”
Zoe: “How can you claim to be a real nerd?”
Professor: “WhEn DiD I cLaim to be a rEal neRd?”

Professor: “[Jesus probably looked like an average Jew at the time.] Judas didn’t say, ‘Just get the white guy.'”

Professor: “There’s a language learning app…it’s like Tinder for
language learners.”

Ettie: “Dolphins sleep while they swim.”
Helaman: “They half-sleep.”
[tense silence]
Professor: “I’m staying out of this one.”

Professor: “Unless it’s a children’s book where the rice has risen up against its masters–‘burn! burn! burn!'”

Professor: “I was the model for this painting. Just so you know, all that definition on the bicep–all real.”

Josh: “I treed the mountain.”
Professor: “If we wanted a really good example of using tree as a verb, that was not it.”

Professor: “Does it exist? The general consensus of people I agree with is that it does.”

Bonus round: Fall 2021 quotes, Road Trip to Phoenix Edition
“We’ve been driving the entire sun time. Also known as day”
“We drive as a colony, not as an individual”
“Just two kids from the Midwest who’ve never seen rocks before”
[About the AC] “I always forget how I can change the temperature as well as the…aggressiveness”

Bonus round II: Fall 2021 quotes, Auna Making Devious Remarks in the Corner of the Classroom Edition
“I am tired of life and its obscure sufferings.”
“[Free-response questions? More like] trapped-response questions.”
“Sober, we have nothing in common.”
“The aggressive cheerfulness of Christmas music is purposefully designed to counteract the gloom.”
[Ettie herniated 10 discs] “There’s something sadly impressive about getting double digits with that.”
“Zombies on the peripheral–feels like an album name.” ∎