no doubt

Midori and Robert McDonald are giving a concert this coming weekend, in which they will play Beethovan.

I find it depressing that I haven't been to a concert since my nursing school days, and still less haven't had a proper conversation about music since highschool.

I used to be around people who loved learning for learning's sake, agreed on the basic principles of a liberal arts education, could talk philosophy and enjoyed debates about deontological ethics, how much fun it is to learn Latin, and thought it was a high honor to be named a Fulbright scholar, not the next contestant on American Idol to win a big contract.

I should face the fact that that part of my life is probably over for good, and I, too, have unwittingly become a rutting, groveling slave to the dollar in a crap soulless workplace that bludgeons moral integrity and reigns ruthlessly by wielding the great death blow to happiness and ambition through dehumanizing amounts of mediocrity and liberal amounts of its ugly twin, complacence.

But, it's still depressing that I've lost touch (mostly) with an academic community I loved to be a part of, even when it seemed silly to debate Graham Ward's Cities of God from the comfort of an air conditioned classroom while thousands go hungry and homeless in those same communities. I miss having brilliant, kind mentors whose natural gifts included the rarest of them all, the ability to teach well.

Yeah, I'm glad I had it while it lasted, and I wouldn't trade my education for anything material, but every once in awhile, I long to be intellectually challenged. The point of a liberal arts education isn't to gather knowledge, precisely. The point of a liberal arts education, rather, is to learn how to engage the knowledge and situations one does come across, in life, and, further, how to manipulate and test the world's claims about itself not merely according to a set of equally dogmatic set of claims of one's own, but with a rigorous analysis and critique that lends to as many questions as supposed answers.

Those who say "they don't need that humanities stuff" or "why should I memorize history when I'm not going to use it in my every day job?" are missing the point entirely of a broad scope of education that goes beyond trade or technical ability. The point of learning history is not necessarily knowing when the Crimean War happened, or why, or which of Beethovan's symphonies was originally dedicated to Napolean. That's the stuff of t.v. trivia. Nice to know, but not need to know.

"The point" of learning history, humanities, etc, and having a well rounded education i so that one is able to critically analyze data, to be able to look for patterns, fallacies in arguments, and be able to argue one's point succinctly and clearly.

However, the American educational system, by and large, seems to fail its students throughout their lifespan as learners, at least by my random sample of purely anecdotal conversations with colleagues.

Caveat:

My colleagues are, for the most part, very kind, decent people with lots of common sense and think-on-your-feet type smartness. I enjoy working with many of them, and have befriended a few. I don't think they're stupid because they don't know or care who Catherine de Medici is.

But, out of all the nurses I've worked with, I've only met one who could talk about Marxist Labor politics and knew better than to think "Pravda" was a rip off fashion designer.

I find I rarely have anything to say to most of my colleagues of them except for polite small talk, and shop talk (which is mostly just bitching any way) and couldn't connect with them outside of work if I tried. These people talk about stuff that bores the shit out of me--like where there's a sale on shoes or detergent, and which Dancing With The Stars contestant they voted for last night.

This is not an indictment of nurses, or their education. Being a great intellectual is not a prequisite for the job.

It's just, I miss being able to talk about the things I enjoy talking about, with someone who "gets it" the same way I do.

Ergo, I have to quell a big portion of who I am--even if it's probably a very unappealing part in some respects, because who likes the dorky grade-obsessed nerd--when I'm around most of my colleagues. I rarely mention I went to graduate school, or an Ivy League university for nursing, and I try not to use what other people call "big words." I can always tell when I've used a word no one understands, or reference something I think is in common parlance but others don't. One night at work, I said, "Those policies are absolutely Machiavellian!" Three nurses looked at me with this puzzled look on their face and continued their discussion without agreeing or disagreeing. I felt like an ass. I should have just said, "Fuck management!" ( I think I did, actually.)

I don't think I'm better than other people because of my education, but I find, increasingly at work, it is an extremely socially isolating factor of my existence in Wurkville. I mean, when a big part of your responsibility is wiping someone else's ass, where the hell are you supposed to meet all these other educated people who grew up listening to Mozart rather than Madonna and laugh at the Latin jokes in Life of Brian because they actually studied Latin?

I fear that I've unwittingly pigeon-holed myself into a mundane world where the best conversation I'm ever going to get out of a colleague revolves around my choice of bathroom sanitizer or how to get Little Bobby Joe Jr to eat his strained peas.

My colleagues seem pretty happy with talking about their trips to the Caribbean and their new Gucci bags, or if Heather Mills' artificial leg is going to hamper her chances at winning a round in Dancing With The Stars.

I just wish, sometimes, I could be the same way, and be satisfied with conversations on topics I probably didn't even have interest in as a sixth grader.