The Justice

Media Credit: Stacy Handler

A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged enough to accompany my mother to work. It was a very strange experience; I have never seen my mother outside of the context of, well, being my mother. I got to see her office and her co-workers, and I heard her answer the phones. And I saw her college diplomas hanging over her desk.

Out of all the tasks I saw her accomplish, most of them only seemed to require "on-the-job" experience-and had no need for that multithousand-dollar diploma hanging over her desk. Feeling somewhat guilty that my parents were wasting their money on my education, I asked my mom if she actually remembered anything from her undergraduate years. Predictably, her answer was a simple "no."

This didn't really surprise me, but it got me thinking: Why are we really here? If most of our careers will not really make use of any of the specific information that we acquire, then what's the point of all of this? Well, if you ask most people, college is really about learning how to learn. Each major, in its own way, gives a student a unique manner in which to examine the world around him. A History major will never remember the dates and details of a particular event, but he will learn to think like a historian would. In the grand scheme of things-whether we like it or not-our brains simply choose to remember the "macro" concepts and to ignore the "micro" details of a specific discipline. This is an unfortunate reality of the limits of the human mind and an education system that forces us to "cram" and often forget later. This doesn't bother most of us though, because we know that college isn't really meant for memorizing.

But the acquisition of information can be an extremely valuable process. It's something that we really shouldn't be throwing by the wayside so easily. After all, we spend so much of our time reading textbooks, writing papers and memorizing that it would seem like too much of a waste of time and money if none of the information was important enough to remember. Also, while my mom doesn't really make use of any of the information she learned in college, that does not mean that it couldn't be useful. Obscure information about the world never hurt anybody.

So in order for Brandeis students to retain at least something from what they learned while they were here, everyone should be required to write a senior thesis.

I know that right off the bat, when most people read this, they will immediately shudder at the thought and dismiss the idea as ludicrous. Most people do not envy their friends at other universities who have to go through the long process of thesis-writing. Moreover, Brandeis already has a senior thesis option, so why make it mandatory? Under the current system, those students who detest writing papers don't have to suffer, and those who excel at the process can choose to partake.

Continued...

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