An unfortunate but necessary consequence of our pathological quest for productivity is that we often forget to keep up with the world beyond our next paper or problem set. Some news naturally gets through to everyone, like on election night when several excitable students, undoubtedly from the lower quintiles, found time to inform everyone about the results via whoops and shouts. But for most of us, the strains of classes, independent work and social activity preclude picking up a newspaper. And with a treasure trove like Blackboard open to us 24/7, no online outlet could possibly compete, either.
Examples abound of students nobly choosing ignorance over a decrease in productivity. Here's to you, guy who does all his reading early but hasn't heard of Proposition 8. And you, girl who spent election night in the lab. And a friend of mine, who when considering whether or not to join an extracurricular listserv thought about the half-second he would lose deleting unwanted e-mails.
It's an even greater sacrifice of productivity to physically go someplace to see an event in person. When the world comes to us in the form of visiting lectures, the creed of productivity usually requires that we don't attend, unless the lecture is related to our research topic. One risk-seeking friend of mine promised herself that she'd attend two public lectures per week and somehow still managed near-optimal productivity, but this strategy is not recommended for premeds.
As luck would have it, the ignorance bred by productivity has several side benefits. First and foremost, unfortunate events outside the Orange Bubble never dampen spirits on the inside. Economic crisis? Not in my residential college. Wal-Mart worker trampled to death on Long Island? That's not in Princeton Borough; plus, I only shop at Polo.
Ignorance about world events could also make study abroad more fun. If some wide-eyed stranger in London or Hong Kong asks you what you think about President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet, won't it be more fun for both parties if you ad-lib an answer rather than reciting an argument from the Opinion page of The New York Times that you didn't read? This allows you to practice the BSing techniques you honed in precept, plus it lets the foreigner believe that Princetonians have unique opinions.
Furthermore, most of us will eventually end up in careers that have some relation to current events. In such jobs, despite the habit of looking no further than the next report or meeting, we'll need some knowledge of what's going on in the world. Even if our job is unrelated, adult conversation tends to be about the issues of the day, and peer pressure will force us to learn about them. And since we had never before followed current events, it will be new and exciting to do so. This potential excitement would be spoiled if we precociously read the Times as undergrads.
Of course, students aren't the only ones on campus who are regularly clueless. For some professors, the age-old questions posed in the confines of McCosh far outweigh the issues that dominate conversation in New York and Washington. They may be world leaders in some esoteric discourse, but they hardly know the Republicans from the Democrats. This is the same phenomenon as the one that afflicts us undergrads: the tendency to focus on the work before us without regard for any other considerations.
Recent actions by Nassau Hall suggest that the administration too is complicit in willful ignorance, albeit in its own way. It follows its own agenda on a variety of issues, sometimes at the expense of student opinion. Examples include overlooking student opinion on issues like the bookstore swap and the purported need to expand the residential colleges. This disregard allows the administration to move full steam ahead with its ideas; in other words, to be more productive in doing what it feels is necessary.
Uninformed (but high-scoring!) students, oblivious (but brilliant!) professors and self-righteous (but well-meaning!) administrators all share a common eagerness for productivity. Perhaps this explains why single-mindedness is endemic to universities like ours.
Michael Medeiros is an astrophysics major from Bethesda, Md. He can be reached at mmedeiro@princeton.edu.
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