Feeding the Scholar-Eating Lion

I heard a great story the other day that really made me laugh at the academic world. The story comes from India, and is a lesson for those who "live inside their head" too much. 

To summarize the beginning, there were four scholars who had been friends since childhood. Three were extraordinarily well educated in the all the arts and sciences, while the fourth had only common sense. The other three were reluctant to let the fourth travel with them, as they did not wish to share the earnings their great knowledge would bring with one so uneducated. They decide to allow him to stay, and they begin their travels. Along the road, they come across the bones of an animal. Here's where the real story starts:

The first of the educated men said, "Here is a chance to show our ignorant friend how much we know.  Here lie the bones of some dead creature.  Let us see if we can bring it back to life by using all that we have learned."  Then he added, "I know how to put a skeleton back together!" The second Brahman, not wanting to be outdone, said, "I can give it skin and cover it with flesh and give it blood."  As he did this, the third Brahman stated that he could breath life back into the body.

As he said this, the fourth Brahman spoke up.  "My friends," he said, "I concede that you have learned much more from books and schools than I have, but my common sense tells me that we should not bring a lion back to life.  I do not believe we are wise to do this.  If he comes back to life, he will want to eat us."

The first three Brahmans were angry with him.  "We let you travel with us even though you are not very knowledgeable like we are.  You know so very little, and yet you presume to kow more than we do?

"I only know what my common sense tells me," the fourth Brahman stated.  "However, if you intend to persist in bringing the dead lion back to life, please hold your efforts until I have climbed this tree."

After the fourth Brahman climbed the tree, the first three Brahmans completed their task of bringing the lion back to life.  As the breath of life filled his lungs, the lion let out with a great roar and ate up all three scholars who were on the ground. With a full stomache, the lion was not willing or able to climb the tree and eat the fourth Brahman.  So the man with no formal education had the sense to climb down the tree and go back to his former home."

Herein lie two great lessons for the academically-inclined: 

1) Knowledge and common sense should be taken in equal parts.

2) Your snobby academic pride will get you eaten by a lion.

There are a few people around here I would love to put in this sort of situation. Granted, the art of lion-building seem to have fallen by the wayside, but I'm sure this story could be suitably taken as a metaphor for the death of one's academic career. Hell, students often seem like lions around here, and I know a few people who just get eaten alive by them because they're too wrapped up in themselves. It seems like the longer one sits in a Ph.D program, the further their social skills deteriorate as well. Or perhaps it isn't their social skills in general, only those that apply to people within their own field. Either way, I beg all my fellow graduate students: as your head fills with knowledge, please be careful what you delete in making room for the new things. Don't let it be common sense and decency! 

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Thanks to mikelockett.com for the text of the story "The Lion Makers".

A Break from Negativity

Last night, I had an hour and a half long phone conversation with my professor and mentor from undergrad (we’ll call him “N”) about all the issues I’ve been having with the composition program here. I have to say, I feel immensely better now, and I no longer feel the need to bolt and go find a program that’s better suited to me. I was able to talk out a lot of the problems I’ve been having, and he really helped me figure out which were stupid things I just have to put up with and which I need to actually do something about. N reminded me that if there’s something wrong with the program here, something lacking, I have a voice and I should use it. I’ll go into detail about some of these issues later; they deserve their own entry. Ultimately, he gave me a lot of great advice, and it was so helpful to be able to just talk to someone I trust who’s been there.

Out of all of this came a decision about next semester that I was already leaning toward: I’m not taking any composition classes other than private lessons next semester. Not only do I feel like the composition courses here are horribly dry, but I actually feel like they’re sucking the life out of my compositions. When we were talking last night, N pointed out that it’s what you do outside of composition that feeds back into it as inspiration. I realized he’s absolutely right. When I was in the digital arts department, I was constantly surrounded by creative people doing all sorts of really interesting, non-computer music stuff. Video art. Installations. Improvisation. I was also in liberal arts classes, and those fed into it, too. Very little of what I did was actually studying computer music. While this has left me with huge gaps in my knowledge, I feel like a much more well-rounded and creative person - a perfectly viable trade-off, in my mind. I’m suffering by immersing myself in all this dry theory of computer music. I need to have the knowledge, I don’t deny that, but I can’t let it stifle my creativity. I feel a lot more motivated now that I have a direction, and I really think that if I can just survive the end of this semester, I’ll be able to make it. The number one piece of advice that N gave me was to find a project I care about and throw myself into it. That’s what he did when he was in this first semester slump in grad school, and it made all the difference. My husband and I actually have a collaboration we’ve been starting the research for, and it’s looking really exciting. I think we have a really good, solid concept, and it’s something we’re both really into. I’ll have to devote an entry to that project sometime soon.

I’m going to use this newfound hope and motivation to go register for next semester’s courses and get some work done. It’s so nice to make a post that isn’t overwhelmingly negative!