(Back in Oxford! I wrote this the other day, and plan to send it in to the Argus, IWU's newspaper, yet it will probably shortened/edited a bit. The higher-ups probably don't want me encouraging students to shrug off the yoke of their professors. Just kidding. Kind of.)
We live in a world of universal standards, and in worlds of our own self-imposed expectations that linger in our minds and intimidate around every corner. And for many of us, this is especially true regarding academics, having attended school for the past fourteen-or-so years of our lives: Is this essay, this thought good enough? How will my professor find it? Is my work amounting to anything? Studying abroad at Oxford since fall, I find that these standards of goodness have become all the more predominant in my mind, even crippling so sometimes.
Academics here are structured quite differently than they are in the States (it’s kind of fun to refer to the US as “over there”) and most everywhere else except Cambridge. These two universities, since their inceptions in 1167 and 1209 respectively, practice the tutorial system, which means that, instead of frequently attending classes with others, students meet one-on-one or two-on-one with a professor (tutor) in their subject once a week, presenting a prepared essay. There are also optional, and encouraged, lectures to attend. Other than occasional class-like seminars, students largely participate in independent study according to their major and choice of topics. That studying and writing is done mostly in isolation is both wonderful and nearly suffocating at time: the intellectual freedom is refreshing and awakening, yet the independence often makes room for impossible standards to creep in: You’re nowhere near as intelligent as the author you’re reading! That’s not a worthwhile idea – too obvious! You’re probably wasting your time trying. Of course, those specific words don’t enter my mind when I’m trying to think: they stroll in as vague senses, engulfing or subtle, that want to lounge about for a bit and distract.
I don’t think that the desire to do good work is entirely a burdening thing: we wouldn’t have some of the wonderful things in this world if people didn’t respond to that itch inside themselves: Shakespeare’s plays, the pyramids of Egypt, the Mini Cooper. Whatever you look at and think, or feel, “That’s good” was probably created by people responding to the desire to do good, things that could have been created insipidly, to extrinsic standards, yet weren’t. There was some necessity involved: Shakespeare needed to put food on the table, the Pharoah demanded they be built, the British Motor Company wanted a fuel efficient car in response to a 1956 oil shortage, yet the creation of these things within their bounds seems infused with a kind of freedom, almost a joy. Turner’s paintings. Sufjan’s music. Spongebob Squarepants (of course, these are idiosyncratic and claim no universality…).
What, then, about these standards that try to choke off what we would create, say, do? I think that that question leads to another: what makes something good? When can we rest, content, with what we have said, or written, or drawn? Being a rather awful poet, I often wonder, for those who work and think through poetry, how does one know when they are finished with a poem, when they have a sense of its completeness? When can we have any satisfaction with what we’ve done? I think a hint to an answer has to do with the inherent desire for goodness that we have that becomes entangled with others’ standards. And I think we are trained this way when it comes to creating. It’s the difference between solving a math problem and writing an essay: one is right or wrong, the other is good or not good. I’d be wrong to say that anything you create and feel good about is automatically good: we need the comment and critique of those wiser and different from us, especially those we trust. However, when it comes down to it, only we can determine if that desire in us has been satisfied.
It’s easy, incredibly so, to get lost in impossible standards here at Oxford, to grow into a habit of seeing all I write and think as inferior. And yet, I think to how this place probably started: a group of friends eager to learn about themselves and the world. They wanted to read and write and do good things. With today’s ease of publication and communication, there is so much white noise meaningless and detached from real life, especially when it comes to academia. But, in the midst of necessity (that essay is due on Thursday!), there is opportunity to do good work, to do something that means something in your actual life, which means that it will also mean something for someone else, if in a unique way for them. “Good is a social word;” writes Bert Hornback, “its Anglo-Saxon roots also gives us the words gather and together. Good includes self with others.” Listen to that desire. Go into the world and do good. It’s what we’re meant to do.
