Yaicha

I just read an article in the NYT about the increased popularity of philosophy as an undergraduate major: In a “New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined.” It’s interesting to see the reasons for this trend, and it reminded me of my own time as an undergraduate (nostalgia alert).

When I began as an undergraduate, I was ravenous for learning. I got the course catalogue before my freshman year and devoured it, fascinated by all that I could learn. I couldn’t wait to try all kinds of courses of study. Neuroscience, I still recall, sounded amazing.

And then there was philosophy. I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in high school and found it to be a thought-provoking glimpse into philosophy. I had a small inkling that maybe philosophy was what I was meant for, and I signed up for an introductory-level course. I envisioned spirited and intellectual debates, learning how to make arguments and refute them, becoming a master of logical reasoning, and studying the classic thinkers of all-time. I was prepared to be enthralled.

Instead, I was bored and confused. The texts assigned were dense and seemed to be purposely obtuse. Even if they were not designed to weed out a large number of the excited freshman who had enrolled in the class, they could hardly have done a better job. The class itself was a tedious and rather pompous lecture in which I found my notes more full of questions than insights. I don’t think I lasted more than a week, and I wrote philosophy off as a boring field for intellectuals with little practical connection to reality.

Now it sounds as though I was just ahead of my time. Philosophy courses are frequently inter-disciplinary, combined with other fields such as economics and politic science. Students are engaged in the ways I wanted to be, and they are drawn to philosophy as a major that will give them a solid foundation in thinking and reasoning that can be applied to many careers. So if were beginning college today, I might well end up majoring in philosophy. Too late now, though. I’ll just blog about it.