I didn't come to college to get an education.
I came to college to learn — who I was, who I wanted to be — and textbooks just happened to be a part of that.
Let's call it like it is. American universities for the most part are not strictly scholarly. If that were the case, there would be a lot more Tennessee lottery money going around and even smaller class sizes.
Instead, universities sell themselves more often on their ability to give us the "total collegiate experience". This includes more than just academic life: campus involvement, Greek life, making new friends and finding out what we truly want to do with our lives.
Yes, academia is a major part of it — it's the ultimate goal after all — but we aren't monastic monks slaving away at scholarship.
We are easily distracted, lazy Americans who like to have fun.
Why am I rambling on about this?
Well, it has come to my attention that UTM will now be enforcing the "no stoles, sashes or pins at graduation" rule.
For years it's been the approved tradition to wear only the cap and gown, and honors cords if applicable. Uniformity is indeed aesthetically pleasing.
The argument is that the focus of graduation should be on academia.
But to deny students the chance to show what they have done in their time here?
Further, don't you have to maintain a certain GPA —higher than that of a non-Greek student — in order to stay in good standing within each fraternity and sorority? Using my UTM-learned logic, I could infer that that indeed has promoted academic achievement.
I'm not Greek. But I will still argue with heavy certainty that the fraternities and sororities my fellow students are involved in have not only significantly shaped their college experience, but also affected their lives in general.
If a university prides itself on well-roundedness and encourages student involvement, then why at the literal last minute would you exclude the other entities that helped get them to the graduation platform in the first place?
Albert Einstein (I've heard he's a pretty smart fellow) said this: "It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from a textbook".
I'm sure that Einstein here is referring to the critical thinking and philosophical debating (basically, the skills not found in books) that take place in respected colleges. But I can't help but to also think that he perchance was referring to the social side of scholarship as well.
If UTM's sole goal was to churn out nothing but Nobel prize winners, then I'm sure we'd have a significant reduction in campus organizations (and David Taylor and Louis Ragsdale would most likely be out of jobs) and a much larger library.
That's not the case, however. This is a public institution that sold us on the idea of getting the total collegiate experience — at least that's what my brochure said.
I say rope up and pin 'em.