Paulitex

Here’s something I think the europeans got right: Taking only a few courses in a semester makes for a better education than taking 5. This is because you actually get time to reflect on what you’ve studied, or even better, surprise yourself when your learning pops up unexpectedly and makes sense of your extracurricular life.

This past year I took networking. Networking is entirely about protocols and not by design. Protocols - shared meaning attributed to arbitrary data - is the foundational building block of all communication - human, animal, or computer. This insight is undoubtedly the most interesting thing I learnt from networking, but I didn’t get that in class.

I spent sleepless nights re-implementing TCP, building an HTTP proxy server, studying all levels of the network stack, but I didn’t get it. I could ace my midterm, but I didn’t get it. My deeper understanding of protocols didn’t come until I took a night off to have fun. I was at a loud funk show at Richards on Richards watching two of my friends communicate with hand gestures. Then I understood protocol.

When I was in Copenhagen I took less class than I ever had before or have since. I had almost no responsibilities. The only assignment throughout the whole semester was a single ‘test’ paper that was a simple pass/fail. And out of my 7 years of University, it was undoubtedly the year I learnt the most. I was having my mind slowly blown open by phenomenology but mostly had a lot of free time. And phenomenology kept showing up in my normal life, making sense of so many things, from the way different people behaved in Aikido class to how I read a book or looked at a painting. In those moments my studies suddenly became relevant and a part of part of who I am. That’s exactly what education should do: grow a person.

I really think UBC (and probably most north american universities) is doing a disservice to their students by expecting 5 courses per semester. The WORK WORK WORK and get the best marks you can so you can get the best job you can is a great way to train future employees - but a horrible way to educate. Alma Mater is latin for “Nourishing Mother.” It’s a beautiful metaphor, but I fear its meaning has been lost in North American universities.

A university should be a place to sow seeds of thought, but we need time to nurture the seeds ourselves. This is the source of original insight - a mind is unique and provides a particular chemistry to grow in. Innovation comes when the seed of an idea has matured into a unique realization and spreads its own seeds to the fertile minds around it. I fear that much schooling is cramming heads full of seeds only to have them rot before given a chance to grow.