Operation [Yet to be named] Part Two: On Studentry, Part One

I deem it unwise to write about any battle at the time it is being fought, mainly because the proximity of the thing, the chaos of the combat, and the fatigue which sets itself like a plague on my body, mind and spirit, all serve to distort the sort of objectivity - the third person-ness - that I feel is important in recounting something with "the written word." However this bit of advice is matched in fervor only by my undying urge to break my own rules. It isn't without a certain sense of irony that I realize my desire to write has given birth to an intuition not to write, and in doing so rendered, or apprehended, the act of writing as both a disease and a treatment (I don't think that there is a cure). I digress long before I progress.

Lately I've been giving the question of the goal of education some thought. What is the purpose of getting an education to the student, what does a student look like after she is finished 'being' a student - how is she different, if she's been changed at all?

Earlier in the semester my conclusion was, shakily, that the goal of education was to make the student a better person. This is at once a broad and vague definition, but alludes to more than mere book learning, or vocational skill building: it has to do with someone's ability to function, to be healthier in mind and body, and to positively impact other people and society. "Good" things, right? I'm not convinced, however, and feel the urge to qualify what I mean by education, as it can be said that all of life can be an education, and it follows that everyone is a student of some sort. But I do not want to reduce my definition to simply mean the modern institution of education, namely, the university, because I fear that this reduction will lead to the inevitable conclusion that the only person who can adequately be called a student is that person who pays a disproportionate amount of money to learn a few things. This, the reader might note, is also how we define a dumb-ass.

So for the purposes of the treatment of this topic here, I'll let the formal definition of education remain nebulous, and hope that the reader infer my meanings from the context of my experiences as I relay them.

This morning, while walking up a set of stairs in the direction of the sun, the image of the word "student" was impressed upon my mind. I am a student, I thought, as I grunted up the stairs in the blinding light. What does that mean? It means the obvious: that I suffer for want of knowledge. That I dedicate resources towards the end of learning, or of at least being within an atmosphere where I can sit and think (which I like doing best of all). But WHY? WHY?!

Years ago, while on a church trip of some sort, I sat on the floor of a tour bus, towards the front, my legs dangling down the front steps (very obviously over that little yellow line you aren't suppose to cross while the bus was in motion), and watched the highway stretch out before us. I remember quite clearly a moment, while we were driving through eastern Colorado: the sun was shining brilliantly over the plains that reflected a warm golden hue, and a thick cloudy mist hung over the dark forms of the Rockies to our west. I was sitting there, elbow on knee, chin on hand, eyes on the road, and something dawned on me. From my vantage point it because very clear to me that I was supposed to spend time in my life learning. Learning what? Things? About what? My self? The world? What? Perhaps I've had a vocational vacuum chamber somewhere within my person from childhood but I remember feeling quite positive that I was suppose to do this, and I gleaned satisfaction from this experience.

Needless to say, I ignored this vocational aspiration - in the formal sense of the word - for quite awhile before reconciling myself to it. By that time I was a grown man (officially), husband (also officially) and father (results still pending just kidding).

So here I am, but why?