Friday, June 12, 2015

The End of Academic

the end of academic:

at top, at the summit of his formal academic life, he passed at eighteen from school to university. then his confidence collapsed! was he not interested? interest is what motivates at university.

in June 1990, 2 weeks to memorize the subject, up early the morning of the exam, slightly desperate but still confident. he was unprepared for the creative academic life. university demands creative thought in the end, a capacity to learn and the ability to create.

July 1990, after the last exams, the most free time at school ever. it was not compulsory to be there after A Levels, though he was not the only one who opted to be present. the last day, something he had always imagined, passed rather slowly. other boys' family, seen for the first time, a dread about the future at university.

A Levels, can you remember the terms, the vocabulary? GCSE, are you studying from the right materials? Special Papers, can you calculate, given the right info? is that the difference at university, you have to have your own ideas?

he found the pressure at university, social, financial, and academic, and his studying, shaped his ideas about career. well, the direction he got there remains, whilst that of school was vague. he liked to read, he liked to think more was possible in the world. he was admitted to read Mathematics & Economics. he read American novels from the college library. he neglected so much of the course materials, he avoided tutorials and lectures, it was no surprise he found the exams so hard. it did have one benefit though, for one paper on interest rates for tutorial, he wrote as he saw the subject, not what was taught at all, and passed.

the whole problem of academic life is that ideas run out at some time, the professional academic is supposed to be full of ideas and ways of putting things, the whole thing of dissertation, papers, books. the pressure is on to formulate a new way of thinking about the subject, not merely to rehash that from other sources, plagiarism the big no no of academia. what is the young academic to do? there are only so many ways of rewording passages or adding filler to reach the minimum limit of words required!

note that there are three components to academic, creation, memorization, and calculation. GCSE seemed to be about memory, A Levels about the last, and university about the first. they are not the same thing!

the collapse, in his mind, of not only interest, but also the feat of calculation in mathematics, affected him all the summer after the First Year, he had to resit in August. if only interest had been sustained!

CLEARCHARGE

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