On Monday, Rob started his talk by reminiscing about his and his friend’s liberal arts experience at Williams College. Rob kept reminding us of how lucky we are to be at such a school where we have the privilege of being around minds that are disciplined, exciting, and to take advantage of our professors and friends. This gave me a little flashback to Junot Diaz’s talk I had attended a few weeks ago. For those who don’t know, Diaz is an amazing Dominican American author and everyone should read his books. Diaz had concluded his talk by telling us how the liberal arts education is great BUT very economically driven. This education doesn’t give us the opportunity to sit down and reflect on what we’ve learned or how to approach situations because we’re constantly so busy with assignments, papers, tests, and what not. Diaz kept telling us to live our life and to stop putting too much pressure on ourselves. By the time we’re 23, we would have put so much pressure on ourselves in trying to be a “writer, a filmmaker, an engineer”, that we realize we haven’t spent anytime enjoying doing what we love in a non instrumental way. If we’re doing something that will produce a future, we won’t love it, but if it has no purpose, we’ll love it. Diaz said, “let your art have no purpose.” These are some questions he asked us about our education – these questions received a lot of claps from students but a lot of awkward looks from those who work in administration. “Why don’t students have enough time to deliberate over the important issues of their day? Why are we to the point of breaking to get college degrees? why are we so busy? There are so many important things we don’t think about because we are so busy. How do we allow a free exchange of ideas? Why corporate boards are running our university?”
This has forced me to think about the type education we all are receiving here at Lafayette – or at Muhlenberg and Lehigh. I think it’s important to make time for things we enjoy and allow our brains to breathe a little. We need to make time to reflect on important issues in our community and our world. After all, we are citizens of the world.