Could I Be Getting Stupider?
The tribulations of being freshly graduated and facing the world
The Beginning:
Six months out of getting a masters degree at Duke University, and I’m already questioning my belief of the multi-dimensionality I felt so entitled to hold within my staunch academic ego. On its face, I am a good student, a cunning deliberator, a motivated and dedicated over-achiever, but does it really mean anything? Yes, higher education can be pivotal to the expansion and culmination of a young persons mind, but in a very imperative way, it also represents elitism. And as I have grown older, I can not help but notice that often elitism, as a concept, can be metaphorized as an empty space wrapped in glittery wrapping paper. Meaning the pompous demonstration of it contains the value, while the actual content contains nothing. I am not saying my education had no content, that is far from true, but I did mostly decide to pursue my masters degree not for the additional knowledge it would provide but for the doors it would open. And in doing so, I am now met with an empty feeling of what I could have honed in that time if not for a degree.
The last six years of my life, and if we are being completely honest a lot more than that, have been characterized by long nights and endless cerebral energy being funneled into the creation of pieces of work for someone else. Please, yes professor, tell me how well my opinion on this matter fits with yours, and grade me based on your own vision. All of my energy cascading into my computer screen with vicious force almost every single night. I can tell you the exact statistics of women in the small scale fishing industry, the economic cost associated with nature based solutions, or the latin names of any woody plant in a 50 foot radius. But in honing myself into a sharp blade, careful and precise, specified and specialized, I have missed out on the opportunity for wide strokes, for expanded exploration. Mind you, I can be awful at giving myself credit, there is no real world where I’m truly dumb or untalented. But I like convincing myself I am, especially when I am met with how much of a beginner I truly am at the things I care about. It’s a special brand of masochism mixed with imposter syndrome I have concocted since being released into the world. And this aggressive and potent concoction has only led me to the bitter taste of realizing that spending two years sharpening my one sword has led me to disregarding my other arsenal of weapons.
The Impact:
On its face, I am simply just using my brain less than I used to. What used to be an all day everyday affair, a marathon of activity and overload in the noggin, is now a self-prescribed jog in comparison. But mostly, as the effects of graduation slowly percolate into my every day life, I am met with the gaping cavity of no longer having a system built to reward me. No one will be writing in my report card about my brilliance? You’re saying I am no longer going to be rewarded for my intelligence? I have to derive that validation from myself now? Wait… And now instead of being validated by academia, I am being humbled by life. It turns out that I need to stop every 200 feet during mountain biking despite being incredibly fit, but I would still do it again. I can be extorted at the dentists (don’t ask). No, I don’t know anything about Syrian history and politics and have nothing much to add to this conversation, but I’m excited to learn. What do you mean I have to do mental math at the cash register while a ten foot line waits for me to add odd numbers together in my head? Maybe I don’t know my multiplication tables very well but I can teach you compassion for insects, connection with the universe, and the art of loving better. That counts for something, right? It turns out that being a student is a skill, one I had almost a lifetime to formally practice. You can get very comfortable doing the things you are good at, even if they include endless research, hours of homework, or cold sweats when you wake up in the middle of the night and remember you forgot to submit that journal entry to Canvas by 11:59. Maybe I am not feeling the effects of being stupid, but rather the effects of no longer having the one thing I practiced every day and exceeded in due to years of practice and discipline. Yes, being a good student is a skill, and one that I spent most of my time mastering. Goodbye to that portion of my life, and with it the comfortability of being very good at something.
The human condition:
Lastly, the system is made to burn you out. And when you are burnt out, your little monkey brain just wants dopamine. And thanks to technofeudalism, dopamine is just a single, infinite scroll away! Everyone say thank you technofeudalism! I would often find myself so drained by my day and the constant, endless use of my brain that I would end up in the galactic void of doomscrolling. Gotta love the ennui of searching for something you will never find. How can I improve my hobbies when my brain has nothing left to offer? How can I learn more when I have spent the whole day learning already? Max capacity has been found, so why not funnel it with more endless content? What a perfect recipe to make a high functioning and emotionally well person, right? It’s so easy, its just right there! And my guitar is so far away, and if I pick it up I will be met with having to face myself. I will have to take accountability for the fact that I have not been consistent, and there is a layer of rust I need to shuck off, just like there is every time I pick it up. I will have to face the fact that my bar chords can ring or go dull or that my fingers are too clumsy to move that quickly. And wow, I really have not mastered strumming patterns at all…in fact, can I even count on beat? Maybe I’m just not made to be a musician and I should just give up now. I know I’ve replayed this section in the guitar tutorial youtube video seven times now, but my brain feels too tired to remember all of it. I think the emotional weight of this and having to face my inefficiencies is more than I can deal with in this current moment, especially after being on campus for 12 hours. I think I will be giving up now. Hmm what can I do instead that is easy, satisfying, and takes no effort on my part? Oh, I know! And I pick up my phone. I am now the ouroboros embodied, repeating an endless cycle and eating myself in the process.
Being a student again
Now that I have been released by the shackles of the higher education system, I am feeling those ineptitudes ten fold. The growing pains of being a beginner in so many areas feels stark. This is accompanied by the fact that I truly am a jack of all trades, with far too many interests to ever fully dedicate myself to mastering one, but I have to admit that it would be nice to be more than a beginner in just a few of them. Yet, that is not something I could offer to myself in the past. I am grateful for the steadily growing garden of interests, a list so long I cannot water all of them. That means I am a dynamic, curious, and a deeply interesting person. But now that I am out in the real world and no longer spending my time just trying to exist, I am finding people that used the time I spent on reading (or writing) painfully long research papers, to instead trek into the woods, or learn more about a special interest, or intimately understand geopolitical relations. GIVE ME SOME I SCREAM, I WANT IT ALL. All the knowledge. I am thirsty with curiosity and cannot learn it all quickly enough. And your freedom with your knowledge and your self-specified and explored curiosity angers and inspires me and maybe even also turns me on. I must learn to play the flute, and wood work, and learn all of global history in an afternoon. 11,000 new books are published every day, but somehow I must find a way to read them all. I am feeling the hunger of a dynamic, curious brain that has been starved to one food for the sake of academia.
Final thoughts:
My arsenal of weapons is growing, some completely new, some still dull, some being sharpened slowly as the days pass. I am everyone’s apprentice and no ones simultaneously. I am here to be inspired by life and all there is to learn. I am a beginner and an expert, a genius and an idiot, a creative and an academic. But in this period of transmutation, of being a fledgling instead of an awarded scholar, I am finding the places my mind needs sharpening or my body needs experience. This phenomenon of entering the world as highly, steeply, impressively educated and feeling dumber, well that is a feeling I never expected. But with most things, as an over-achiever and self-proclaimed “intelligent person” I will only take that empty space and see it as an invitation. As a multi-talented, multi-interested person who directs my energy all over the place no matter what stage of life i’m in, I can say with conviction that I have never felt more “stupid.” And I am proud. Because, it is only when you recognize your idiocy that you can begin the lifelong journey to assuage it. So, no, I am not stupid, I am just no longer an expert, and that is hard.
“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing”
-Socrates
