Think outside the bookbag

With the start of bookbagging on Monday, yet another semester comes into view. Full of possibilities and marked by the momentary return to blissful academic romanticism wherein we forget about the actual burdens of academic life and envision all the possibilities of a new semester—one replete with new classes, new professors and new material waiting to be explored. Excepting those seniors about to be shown the secret passage out of our Duke bubble, we are all now faced with the question of what to spend our next semester at Duke studying.

We should be asking why the reality of the academic experiences is not always commensurate to our aspirations. Which courses in August will actually live up to the expectations and dreams we imagine now in March and April? In asking these questions, we encourage students to seek classes where this gap is minimal or nil and do their best to shrink the gap themselves.

How much students dedicate themselves to their classes and how seriously faculty take their teaching responsibilities are necessary components of transformative and memorable classes. The unity of both wholehearted professor and student—which forms the foundation for a vibrant type of learning in and through community—seems a rarity in most undergraduate courses. We identify two ways to overcome these issues that too often keep students and faculty from fully investing in courses the way they might originally hope to.

First, students ought to think more about different modes of engagement with the content of their classes. The path of least resistance figures frequently into the decision calculus behind those third and fourth classes, rather than the path that better satiates a student’s curiosity and imagination. But this is not rooted in any kind of mutual exclusivity. If grade-driven selection is dispensed of and replaced by the pursuit of learning-in-and-for-itself, requirements become opportunities for intellectual development instead of checkboxes to be filled. They can be chances to think about how different methodologies and disciplines intersect with one’s core questions. This requires a cultural shift that will not be as simple as changing the types of requirements in the curriculum. But, it offers the opportunity to identity how content often coheres productively from a number of different academic perspectives.

Secondly, students should think more about modes of integration across their classes. For example, using a single research question to synthesize different projects, papers and courses or choosing a question, book or dilemma and tracing it across different classes offers focus on disparate courses. This lends semesters a specific character and form trends that piece into the broader academic narrative of eight semesters at Duke. Choosing a semester of courses that can be integrated in this fashion provides the basis for a coherent semester with specific goals that can become a stepping stone into future semesters.

We know not every class or every semester will live up to its potential; life so often gets in the way of our highest aspirations. But, what we do ask is that the foundations are there for the academic experience to be the central part of the Duke experience. This requires students to set goals and build a narrative for their academic development such that a semester can be oriented towards a clear set of goals that help to cohere the academic experience. As book-bagging continues, heed this advice and think about more ways to make sure the excitement of new classes and more learning does not subside when the semester begins.