I’ve been seeing posts about “useless degrees” lately, usually in reference to liberal arts degrees or majors that don’t translate directly to a job. I also recently picked up a book called The Physicists World by Tomas Grissom, who happened to be one of my professors at The Evergreen State College (TESC). He was a great teacher and I wish I was a better student. As it was I was busy working, dating my soon to be wife and struggling through the more advanced math that the program demanded. I’m only through the first couple of chapters of the book that mostly hinge on the history of thinking about motion from the presocratics and other philosophers. There’s no physics per se yet and I love it. This got me to thinking about my journey in higher education.

I attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington, the only state four year school that was founded in the 20th century with a mandate to “unshackle education” from current constraints. It’s a liberal arts and sciences school that ends up being the butt of many a joke about “underwater basket weaving” and the like. One year the seniors choose a graduation theme of “Would you like fries with that?” although it was as much a reflection of the state of the economy and value of higher education at the time than anything else.

It’s a very different school in a lot of ways. Among the innovations found there are the common use of seminars; a group teaching and discussion style that depends on active participation by students, a lack of grades; instead students receive detailed written evaluations from their faculty and are expected to write self evaluations at the end of every quarter, and core programs; first year cross disciplinary programs that replace strictly defined prerequisites. At that point in my life it was quite possibly the best option because I didn’t have a history of thriving in traditional classroom settings.

My first year there found me in a core program called Ways of Knowing. In it I got to learn how to read middle english while reading The Canterbury Tales, digits and arithmetic of ancient Sumeria while analyzing The Epic of Gilgamesh , meditation led by a Tibetan monk and my first tastes of philosophy and calculus. After high school, this was a ridiculously fun expansion of my horizons. I loved it and soaked up as much as I could. It turns out the liberal arts make you think. Picking apart the themes of these topics while looking at the history and context all at the same time is exhilarating. You learn new lenses to interrogate ideas and themes that wouldn’t be easily available if you didn’t have the wisdom and guidance of your professors. Writing a self evaluation at the end forces you to be honest about how much you applied yourself to the tasks at hand.

Along with the classwork was the experience of being on campus. Evergreen tended to attract free and even radical thinkers, exploratory artists and a willingness, even pride in looking beyond the status quo. Walking into the library art gallery was almost always fascinating as even if the media was traditional the subject rarely was. The people I went to school with came from nearly everywhere in the united states and many places beyond so nearly any opinion or point of view could be listened to at some point in class or outside. Agree or disagree there was always something that could be learned from another point of view, another background or way of living.

It also drew people who cared about the world and their fellow humans. I remember introductions in one of my science classes where one of my classmates shared his goal of “helping communities find better ways to manage their water resources”. Another classmate was focused on helping find a cure for HIV. It’s no surprise that all of the graduate programs at TESC, Masters in Public Administration, Environmental Sciences and Education are all service oriented. It also draws instructors who want to teach. It’s not a research college.

I had a leader at one point who used to say there are two types of greeners (slang for TESC students). Lazy hippies and critical thinkers but I don’t think that’s true. I think a vast majority of the students and graduates are critical thinkers. Maybe in very different ways and with perspectives. The environmentalist who ties themselves to a tree is trying to affect change just as much as the visual artist who maybe doesn’t resonate with the community at large or the budding scientist who is still learning how much they don’t know about a grand unified theory of everything. Greeners tend to be vocal and outspoken. They tend not to be satisfied with the current state of the world, believing instead that it can be made better and know they can be a part of making it so.

Critical thinking framed both as a willingness to challenge everything combined with the discipline of inquiry was the greatest gift from my time at Evergreen. In Ways of Knowing I learned that no matter how much is imparted in the words of someone’s writing the context is just as important. Did this person have an agenda? What were their influences? What was their history? By the way, the same thing applies to science. Why did the greeks care so much about geometry but know so little about algebra? Why did the Sumerians group their numerals by 30’s instead of 10’s? How did World War II shape so much of physics and engineering? These kinds of questions, the application and measuring of evidence and probing of context are all perhaps more important today than they were when I was learning them. Practice makes you better.

It was therefore no surprise that the first couple of chapters of The Physicist’s World contained very little in the way of physics but instead a historical context to set the stage. Tom’s rich and disciplined writing brought me back to my time at TESC, a place where I went thinking I would become an astronomer but instead learned to love art, service and science all in equal measure. A place where I might return someday to try something new. I’m quite proud of my “useless degree” and the lessons I’ve carried from it all throughout my life.

Omnia Extares!

TESC