Though Nothing Come of It

I attended a small liberal arts college, now a university, in Jackson, Mississippi. I graduated with a Bachelor of Music Degree in piano performance and a minor in English. For some years, I have considered re-studying all of my college courses as a personal project. Now’s the time. My motivation this second time around is to focus on learning the material for its own sake. In college, I was on a full scholarship, renewable each year based on my academic record. It was natural for me to focus on making good grades. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to continue my education, at least not easily. But sometimes, the joy of learning fell through the cracks.

I will use my college transcript as my roadmap. With it as my guide, I will know what courses to take in what sequence. The course credit hours will provide benchmarks for my classroom sessions (text reading) and a rough estimate of the time required to study the material. I no longer have most of the textbooks I used in college. However, I can choose my study materials and supplements since the learning is self-directed. I own an electronic keyboard and will thus spare my neighbors the horror of hearing me practice by using headphones. I still have a lot of the piano music I learned in college, although I will need to spend time rebuilding my technique before tackling most of it. Instead of performance classes and recitals, I will perform in the privacy of my home for, and sometimes with, my wife, an accomplished recorder performer and trained pianist.

The freedom to choose my study materials is a significant advantage in my project. As an example, my college was a Christian college in the Reformed tradition. It required two semesters of a class titled “Survey of the Old Testament.” I’m fashioning a two-semester class titled “Survey of the Hebrew Bible.” I’ve chosen The Jewish Study Bible as my text and have mapped both semesters to the relevant sections of my chosen text.

A notable advantage of self-directed learning is the freedom to avoid rigid timelines, deadlines, and unmodifiable class schedules. For instance, it will be simple for me to shift a class from a day with an inescapable conflict, which was difficult in college. My periodic class papers might be blogs or even short stories. Who knows?

But there are also disadvantages. For example, I will lack interaction with the teachers and peers I had in college. I often profited from classroom discussions and the questions students asked that I hadn’t thought of or was too embarrassed to ask. I will miss the guidance and mentorship of my piano teacher, his sensitivity, and suggestions for improving my musicianship. I’ll miss the time spent just hanging out at the student grill. My kitchen is not the same ambiance, shall we say.

Another disadvantage, a mixed blessing perhaps, is the absence of formal assessments by others. While I wouldn’t say I liked working for grades, they told me, in one sense, how I was doing. Evaluating oneself is not that easy. It’s a rough guide, but perhaps some concentrated self-examination and attempts to determine how I feel about my learning and progress will help. I won’t know until after doing this for a while.

One of my greatest challenges will be the possibility of procrastination and lack of accountability. I must develop strategies to help me stay motivated and disciplined. Hmm, maybe chocolate? My inability to pay for my college education alone motivated me to work hard to do well. The Vietnam draft also served as an incentive to stay in college. I had a college deferment.

Reflecting on the positive aspects of my four years in college, I especially remember some inspiring teachers. I had the same teacher for all my music theory classes: harmony, counterpoint, form and analysis, and composition. Many Sundays, she lunched at the restaurant where my father and I provided live music. I fondly remember the patience of my piano teacher when I hadn’t put in the necessary work between lessons. And I recall the campus, the old buildings, and the library since replaced, that sat on the second floor of the student cafeteria. On the front steps of the Fine Arts Building, I would often sit and spend time with friends.

I expect significant challenges in completing my project, something I didn’t anticipate the first time. After all, I was a lot younger then, less experienced with failure. One problem abides: balancing my project tasks with other life commitments. The commitments are different, but the need to keep life in balance remains. And then, there will be moments of frustration and burnout when I will need to remember why I’m doing this. So, why am I doing it?

My dad used to say that many things can be taken from us in life: our wealth, our family, our reputation, our health, and our life, but no one can ever take away our education. There is a sense in which this project is an act of gratitude to my parents for the value they placed on education, to my teachers, all of them, over the years, who put up with me, but finally, a pleasurable journey I want to make. 

Let me close with some wise words of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), the English churchman and Roman Catholic Cardinal. [The Idea of a University [1873]. Discourse V, pt. 6].

There is a knowledge which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labor. 

All the best,
Gershon