crankyoldman | Mini-Essays for Dynamics Class

God, a lot of my stuff is starting to sound like a manifesto. For some background, keep in mind the context, the whole "inner and outer world" idea is that the mental and abstract processes constitute an inner world, where external influences and objects constitute the outer. Edit: This inner/outer world was provided to us as a concept, hence the linked questions. While this is a little more simplified than I usually like my concepts (and you can tell by how my answers tend to ask questions back), but that's what I had to work with.

Also note I wrote this in a fit of inspiration mere hours from when it was due. Oh, if only I could tame my writing experience to work better on cue.

How do the various aspects of your [insert college name here] education map into these two worlds?

For the most part, the reliance is clearly on the inner world. As most students will remark, a lot of the classes taught rely on "theory" which by it's purest etymological definition means "contemplation, speculation"--obviously the inner world. While the majority of the education relies on theory and the manipulation of theory, there is a strange leap that occurs when application is called upon. This is found in the labs, where the theories that equations and graphs had previously illustrated had to fit into the world. For certain concepts, this translated well, due to the scope of the experiments. But for the most part it was an object lesson in the outer world--just because it looked pretty on paper did not mean that it would act like that when such factors as the state of the equipment, the vibrations of a room or the amount of sleep the demonstrator had that night were added in.

This is a common occurance in several studies in higher education, though. Whether due to a stigma on the part of technical career leanings or the divorce of the senses that are not directly related to cognition from what is considered the academic, a certain emphasis on the inner world as the educated world is made. Despite this traditional sense, though, there may be some changes to this on the way or already occurring.

Where does creativity live in this view of the two worlds?

Some might argue that creativity is solely the domain of the inner world for how can someone be creative simply from materials and external exposure? This view, however, is missing the most important aspect of creativity, which is the translation of one thing into a completely different thing. A person has to be a creator to be creative--the range of creations can go from abstract to tangible. With this in mind, creativity seems to be best described as the razor edge line between both of the worlds, where the senses pick up from external and the external becomes palpable to the mind. Even a creator of abstract concepts with abstract tools has something from the outer world that factors in, be it through inspiration or raw material.

With this in mind, the person that learns to translate between the two worlds has tapped into the most creativity potential.

Which world is bigger or more important?

It depends on the person, really. If they are naturally introverted or extroverted, what they want to be, what their environment is, and what sorts of living they make--a blanket statement on importance would be too simple even in this simplified dual example. Instead a better question to ask would be which world is more important to which person, and how a person can improve their situation through working towards a better familiarity with the world they are less in. The introvert that keeps getting passed by due to their shyness could find an in through the cultivation of a communication skill parallel to something that makes them uncomfortable. While a great many things lie in the middle of the two worlds, nearly crossing the boundary, it can still feel like quite a gap to some people due to the near intuitive nature of those actions and objects closest to the boundary.

Basically, neither world is more important or larger than the other, but the middle area is something that has great importance.

What does it mean to be educated?

Personally, I think the term "educated" is misleading. While I think that education as an act is a necessary and wonderful thing, the state of being "educated" is a fantasy. At the very most a person can hope to be skilled, proficient, competent. The learning process is a lifelong struggle and stream. Anyone that assumes otherwise has succumbed to stagnation, allowed themselves to become a passive member of their own lives. Education is an action, not a state of being, and requires action on the part of educators and students. A person that comes out of a degree or a job and states they are now educated is deluded. It is a comfortable delusion too, because it assuages the inactivity of the conscious mind which inherently knows that seeking out more knowledge, more experience is as necessary to being human as any of the faculties for survival. So, it would not be too bold to say that education's goal should not be to merely get people to a state of being educated, but to the mindset that education is a near endless process and cycle of events that must continue on throughout a person's entire life.

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Education is an action, not a state of being, and requires action on the part of educators and students. A person that comes out of a degree or a job and states they are now educated is deluded.

Jesus fuck, Cendri, marry me NOW.

I also liked the part about how academia is so focused on the "inner world" as you called it - my labs were the same way, and I thank fate that I decided to take my co-op because without that hands-on experience I might never have gotten a job. Seriously. I had friends with grades as good as mine if not better who couldn't find a thing when they graduated because they didn't have any experience in the real world.

Well the "inner" and "outer" world was part of our last class lesson, I shit you not. In an engineering class. Love this prof. I personally dislike polarities like that, because if you'll notice, I made a distinction between what was actually important and what we're taught under.

Yeah, I'm probably going to end up so obsessed with this kind of stuff I'll make the effort to publish a paper, at this rate. I mean, like Prof Jersey Highwind and I discussed at one time, what separates our engineers from the outsourced ones in other countries is that on the whole, Americans kick ass creatively, because we're less regimented than other cultures (like Japan will always kick our ass on the neat and tidy answers, but fumble if suddenly they were told to rotate it or make it blue, as an example).

I expected to have rambled much longer, but I think I did alright making my points. Also, I wrote it during my programming class's lab time. XD

~Cendri

I also think there's a huge issue of "practicality" missing in so much education. Both the "inner" and "outer" parts could totally stand a swift kick in the ass from what's actually useful. For example: understanding thermodynamics, knowing about free energies and how entropy determines what will happen in a system? Useful. Actually having to memorize how to calculate a Gibbs Free Energy? Useless, because nobody in the fucking world uses Gibbs Free Energy (except for professors who just want to have a circlejerk) because what we really care about is what actually came out of the reactor and what it does and not what its Free Energy is.

The thing about other countries has also been recently on my mind. Mostly because I'm terrified for the U.S. Where are all the fucking American grad students? They're not in the fucking sciences and engineering as far as I can see.

Grad school isn't really a warning sign for me as much, to be honest. A lot of people I know (not you) go to grad school because they can't get a job and thing MORE SCHOOL is the answer. Most of the grad students being international is indicative that they are NOT getting jobs.

What worries me is how dull Amercians are getting. We're losing the creative edge!

~Cendri

The problem with saying that one "is educated" is that it's missing half the concept. One is educated in something; one becomes knowledgeable about something. I am educated in English literature. I am knowledgeable about X-Men comics in the 1990's. It was once possible to have read every written work in Western literature, and thus be considered educated, but that is obviously no longer the case - and the world is a lot bigger than the canon of Western literature, these days. Even then, there were plenty of things that an educated man would probably be ignorant of - and even if it were still possible to read everything written in your own language, there would still be vast fields of knowledge untouched. I have to agree - education is a fluid process; it is a journey, never a destination.

Well, like a lot of term "educated" has become a loaded word, with connotations that rather bother me. I'd rather say competent, or the slightly archaic "learned" than "educated". Something about the emphasis on learned kind of feels more like you could continue, rather than the stopping point that educated seems to have.

But then, I did answer several things on the basis I totally knew what the easy answers would be. I could probably predict what most of my class said to that stuff, they would probably encourage the "inner world" while contradicting themselves by saying you need more experience.

At least, this has been my frustration with my colleagues.

~Cendri

That is the problem with people who've never actually had to live in the real world - they know how to produce the "correct" answers, without actually stopping to think about how they apply. This is why so many people graduate, spend a year or two in the real world, and then go hide in nice, safe graduate school. They know how school works, and school has taught them nothing else.

Funny you should mention grad school, because Sev just brought it up. XD I plan on going to grad school, but for the reason of taking classes COMPLETELY in a different direction than my undergrad, because I think I have people that will pay for it.

Actually, considering my Christmas bonus, I could probably get them to fund me going on a random trip too, as long as I kept my science up. XD

And I realized the other thing that bothered me about the word "educated" vs. "learned". Educated is a more passive thing, a reaction. If there's anything that shouldn't be done passively, it's education, in my opinion. Which is why I hate hate hate lecture for anything other than say, history. History is one of those things you sit around and listen to stories for. Engineering should not be taught like a history class.

I could ramble on about this for days. God, hopefully I will have time for that silly module Prof JH wants me to write up for him.

~Cendri

I don’t have much to say other than I enjoyed reading over this.

Good luck!

Very nice stuff. Thanks for sharing:)

Mini-Essays for Dynamics Class

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