Staying Awake in School

“now it is high time to awake out of sleep” (Rom. 13:11)

We properly call occasions such as these commencements because they are not endings but beginnings. A commencement is best symbolized by the dawn rather than the sunset. I want to speak today of the dawn. If the title hadn’t already been taken, I would have called my remarks “Awake at Dawn.” Instead, I have settled for “Staying Awake in School”—or “An Owner’s Guide to Education.”

Henry David Thoreau concludes Walden—a book everybody should read, preferably when at your age—with the following lines: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”¹ Think about that: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” I often find myself quoting these lines to my students. Thoreau saw himself as a rooster whose business it was to wake up his neighbors. Like Thoreau (or Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society), I sometimes want to crow in my students’ ears, “Wake up! Don’t sleepwalk through school: Carpe Diem—Seize the day! Take responsibility for your education, make it yours, own it!”

Too many students simply put in their time—dutifully but dully filling assignments and completing required courses but never assuming responsibility for the larger task of becoming educated. “Educate” comes from the Latin educare, which means to lead (ducare) out (ex).² To be educated is not simply to have a diploma but to be lead out of ignorance to knowledge, darkness to light, sleep to wake.

I often hear students and parents say how important it is to get through college. And I agree. A college degree is a passport to many opportunities. But at least as important as “getting through college,” is making sure “college gets through you.” True success in college comes not simply from receiving a diploma, even one with honors, but from receiving an education.

I advise my students to get their money’s worth from school. After all, they’re paying for it. Students cheer when class is canceled and complain when they are given a challenging assignment. I tell them they should do just the opposite: cheer when a course challenges them and complain when classes are canceled. The course that doesn’t expect enough of them cheats them of their investment, not just in tuition but in time and opportunity. It cheats them of their birthright and their future. Don’t take classes or teachers that require little, because they generally give you little in return. Take courses that stretch you, that give you your money’s worth.

But do it for the love, and not merely for the money. Good students have a love affair with learning. They care, deeply, passionately, about knowledge. Mediocre students care mostly about grades. They spend their energy “psyching out the teacher” and “beating the system,” rather than tuning into ideas and mastering the material. Such students may get by—they may even get good grades—but they won’t get educated. Hence, they won’t truly succeed in college.

In fact, their recipe for success is really a formula for failure. Their vision of success transforms college into a life of “quiet desperation”—to borrow another phrase from Thoreau’s Walden.³ For despair assuredly is the result of going through school driven by the relentless demon “ambition” and haunted by the clammy “fear of failure.” Conversely, the joy of discovery rewards those who seek knowledge as an end in itself, who “own” their education, who are fully awake to the dawn.

But how can you own your education when so much of what you study is mandated by others? College can seem like four years of being told what, when, and how to study. Universities set general education requirements, colleges and departments lay down major requirements, professors impose course requirements, professional schools stipulate competency requirements. So how can the poor student, caught in this web of externally imposed expectations, take charge of his or her education and really own it?

I want to suggest a few strategies for you. These apply to high school as well as to college. But first, let me make clear that “taking charge” does not mean ignoring or flouting institutionally imposed requirements. It means finding ways to convert things you have to do for others into things you also do for yourself. It means finding your “original relation” not only to the universe (as Thoreau’s friend Emerson said) but also to the university.⁴

Let me illustrate how you can choose to do what you have to do. I often give my students an assignment to read an essay or a story and then write about it. Usually I allow lots of latitude for them to develop their own approach, but sometimes my assigned topics are more prescriptive. And almost always it is I who assigns the work they must discuss. Then I tell them to “own” the assignment. By this I mean to find their own angle, their own truth, connected to their own experience, and expressed in their own voice. That is, I want them to find how they are free to choose even within the constraints imposed by my assignments. Owning the assignments means finding their freedom within limits and then using it. Students who are truly awake in school find ways to own even math homework or lab books. True education occurs only when people take such ownership.

The same principle holds true for many requirements you’ll face in college. For example, you can grudgingly take the general education courses only because the university requires them (in which case, you will resent the experience and learn very little from it), or you can find ways to own your general education (in which case, you will welcome general education as an opportunity to fulfill your insatiable curiosity, to give your knowledge wholeness and integrity.) The fully awake student will be alert to the ways to tailor any institutional requirements to his or her own interests.

Here are some suggestions on how to own your education and hence stay awake:

In college, you will have to fulfill general education requirements in science, history, P.E., and so forth. Don’t just follow the herd into large lecture courses. Look for the most stimulating classes, the ones that promise to mean the most to you personally. Look for alternatives in the system. For example, at Brigham Young University, any student can escape large lecture sections of a general education course by taking them through the honors program—or at night.

Another idea to stay awake: Always try to take the best teacher. Good students quickly learn to take teachers and not just take courses. A great teacher can make even seemingly dull material come alive. Unfortunately, the inverse is also true. A bad teacher can ruin a good subject. No subject (alas!) is teacher-proof.

Here’s another idea to take ownership: Use your teachers’ office hours to clarify ideas and deepen your personal contact. It’s amazing to me how few students take advantage of this opportunity. Perhaps shyness or the forbidding posture of the teacher drives them away. But lack of genuine student interest may also be partly to blame.

And finally, take ownership by organizing peer groups for discussion of material and to study for tests. Successful students learn from other students. They ask thoughtful questions and listen to the answers from their peers as well as from the professor. Lively study groups can help compensate for even mediocre and boring teachers.

All this will help you truly stay awake.

I want to spend some time talking about the importance of learning from and with your peers. You have gotten a taste for this in your program here at BYU. I think the potential of peers to enhance an education may be the single most neglected feature of college life. The fellow students you choose to spend a great deal of time with may be more important to the quality of your education than anything else in your college experience. I know mine were for me.

Partly deliberately and partly through good luck, I eventually surrounded myself with like-minded roommates—serious students, people who liked ideas, books, and issues. We debated, tested, and joked about the ideas we learned in class. We talked freely about what we were studying and thinking—over the table and until late at night. We went to plays, and concerts, and lectures—separately, together, and with dates. We took courses together. We picked each other’s and our professors’ brains. One semester we invited favorite professors over to our apartment for Saturday pancake breakfasts so we could ask them about their research and graduate training. Another semester, some friends put on readers’ theaters as a group date.

Another semester, several of us even organized our own course, taking turns discussing classic works of philosophy or politics and inviting professors in as guest lecturers. In a way, this course merely formalized what was going on anyway. That is, we were already assuming responsibility for our own educations, already teaching ourselves, and each other. The professors became mentors who were there to help us do better what we were already doing on our own.

My associations with these peers have had a permanent influence on my academic career. Besides giving me a taste of what college education ought to be at its best, these friendships have continued to enrich my life, undimmed by the miles and the years. Some of my college friends went on to careers of great distinction. For example, one was a Rhodes Scholar and another clerked for a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Their examples inspired me to strive for greater success in college and taught me more than any course or set of courses I took. Moreover, the memory of these college friendships is still as sweet as honey and as fresh as this morning’s dream. I hope that the budding intellectual friendships that have been planted here this summer will grow into such sweet fruit over a lifetime.

So I urge you again. Seek out like-minded, fully awake friends. Your peers, especially your intellectual soul mates, can contribute immensely to the quality of your college education. Seek out friends who love to learn and know how to study.

And speaking of resources outside the classroom, don’t neglect the countless opportunities to enrich your education through plays, concerts, lectures, and so forth. I am not suggesting that you overdo it here. Colleges typically offer such a rich and varied smorgasbord of extracurricular activities that some caution and judgment is needed, lest you neglect your course work while feasting on optional “delicacies.” Most students, however, suffer from the opposite problem. They take too little advantage of the rich extracurricular academic life available at the university. They need to remember not to let their schooling get in the way of their education. One trait of truly educated people is that they are curious about almost everything. Cultivate curiosity.

As you throw yourself with abandon into the quest for knowledge, you will begin to decide for yourself what is essential to the quest and what is merely peripheral—or at least postponable. I remember determining for myself that an educated person needed to develop two competencies in two essential areas, which I called “numeracy” and “literacy.” Skill in both entails learning to manipulate symbol systems—numeral or verbal. As you attempt to “own” your education, you might develop your own definitions and rationale to guide you in establishing your personal educational goals.

By nature, I tended to emphasize what might broadly be called “literacy.” Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Studies” defines for me the three most important activities of literate people. Bacon said, “reading maketh a full man, conference [that is, conversation] a ready man, and writing an exact man.”⁵

I would suggest you consider Sir Francis Bacon’s words as a guide to literacy. To get educated as you get your degree, develop the habit of wide and constant reading. This will make you full—full of information and ideas, the raw material of thought. Second, converse thoughtfully with others. Thus you will become, in Bacon’s terms, ready—ready to speak intelligently about many subjects, ready to see the pros and cons of your views and those of others. And third, write—the hardest discipline of all but also the most rewarding. For writing trains you to be clear, coherent, and cogent—or, as Bacon says, exact in your thought.⁶

As you do these things, you’ll begin to take ownership of your education, you’ll begin to be more truly awake. You will empower yourself with the skills you need to get more out of what you read and hear. For remember that discovery favors the prepared mind. Millions of people had seen apples fall before Newton. But Newton discovered something fundamental about the universe because he brought to the experience a mind prepared with significant questions. So learn to bring to your classes and readings a mind full of pertinent questions.

As you do, you’ll acquire more grabbers in your brain that, like Velcro, make the things you read and think about stick in the mind. You’ll also have more “a-ha!” experiences—one of the great rewards of education. That is, ideas will soon begin to link up—not just the ideas you learn in a single course but also connections between ideas from seemingly unrelated areas. You may see, for example, how the biological concept of natural selection relates to free market economics, or how the doctrine of a resurrection challenges the second law of thermodynamics. You know you are awake when the six o’clock news triggers connections to the world of fifth-century BC Athens.

One mark of educated persons is that they don’t hold single facts in isolation but are constantly testing one concept against another, exploring the harmonies and contradictions among ideas. Thus they are more fully awake; thus they own their opinions because they have not just received them but also have hefted, measured, weighed, and sifted them.

Now all this might seem pretty intimidating to you, especially as you are, after all, only just about to start college. Well, let me say that I have great sympathy for your anxieties. You see, unlike you, I was a bona fide underachiever in high school. My high school grades were abysmal, but this was mainly because I hadn’t been sufficiently challenged, nor did I challenge myself. Then, sometime between my junior and senior year in high school—when I was exactly your age—I began to wake up to a bright, resplendent world of ideas. I have been opening my eyes to light ever since.

So I greet you at what I hope will truly be a commencement, the dawning of life-long education. I salute you, again in the words of the concluding sentences of Thoreau’s Walden: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”⁷