Academia
So I just wrote a whole long blog entry on my brain turning to cabbage because all I do all day is make small talk and stock shelves. And about how I want to get back to school and after that be a teacher because it makes me feel like my brain is alive. But upon reading it I realized that it is going to sound like snobby academic bullshit. And I don't mean it that way.
The problem, or one of them, is that I love academics. I love school. I love doing research in libraries that have stood for three hundred years. I love finding the facts and then shooting down ivy league professors, pointing out the holes in their statements. I love seeing how math and history and psychology are all the same thing from different angles. I love connecting the dots. And I don't think that there is any way to make my love of most things academic not sound stupid. Because academics are snobs. I have found very few who are not.
I'm not quite sure how to explain myself on this one. I hate the academic social world, you know, outside of class, because professors think that they know everything. They don't realize that everything is relative. What these people spend their life studying matters, but only in relation to itself. Academics make an imprint on history, but no more than any other group. I can step back and realize that my twenty page paper on ultra-rapid cycling in pediatric bipolar disorder, while interesting (in my opinion) and possibly useful to doctors diagnosing one very rare disorder, is not as useful to society as what a carpenter does with his day, or a woman who runs a great business that gives many people job security and income. If I become a public school teacher, the important part of my job is not teaching what year the magna carta was signed, it's getting to know my kids and helping them to see their own potential as carpenters and business people.
So when I go on and on about how working in the bakery is turning my brain to cabbage, I suppose I need to qualify the statement. I should say that I, unlike the Baker I work with and many of our coworkers, am not good at retail or food service. I am not creative about how to decorate a cake or double the profit on muffins. I cannot come up with new ways of doing the daily chores that are better, faster. I do not find satisfaction in customers being delighted with the brownie tray they ordered. I can stock, I can bag, I can slice, but I cannot do what the Baker does. It doesn't make me satisfied. What will (I'm betting) make me satisfied is helping kids get through high school. I only made it through two years before I got the hell out. Others don't have that option, and I want high school to be better for them than it was for me. And I want to encourage them to all go out and do what they are good at, whether it's writing fifty page papers on ancient greeks or tuning a car to perfection.
The academic world thinks that it is mighty important. Most people think that it is not important at all. I think it is somewhere in between. Reading books makes my brain happy, but it is what I do with my brain for the rest of the world that matters in the end.
posted by Bry at 12:12 PM
6 Comments:
There's a great documentary about class in our society running on PBS. I'm trying to record it next.
The more educated you are the less likely to eat refined white flour bread. Americans eat white bread 5 to 1 over wheat.
I actually prefer wheat. Except for the occasional rj's choice on scali. But no wonderbread for me.
I think you've got the proper picture here, and it applies to most disciplines. You work to do and you do what works.
Each discipline has its application - curing disease, fixing your car, intuiting a new insight about Shakespeare for interested readers.
In truly academic terms: Whatever floats your boat.
People with your attitude are the ones who should be teaching. Sadly, I think that optimism is beaten out of them by bureaucracy.
Anyways, I get what you mean. I actually thrive at work. My creative juices get flowing with the buying, displaying, and marketing aspects. And working on the website and blog too. And yeah, I do get a lot of satisfaction when people leave our store(s) happy.
As for bread and class... is it really a case of education or income? Cause speaking from a working class perspective, I buy the cheapest bread I can stand (which happens to be Market Basket light wheat).
Uhhm. hmmm, maybe in ancient rome when the elite refused to eat bread that wasn't pure white because only peasants ate wheat and brown breads, was bread an indicator of class but i'm not sure how that applies to Bry's blog. Oh well, i bake my own bread anyway.
I want to start baking my own bread. I've gotten pretty comfortable with the whole proofing/baking science since working in the bakery. When I started I was like "rise? proof? You don't just heat and eat?". Fine bread is a strange combination of art and science.
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