Whenever I see such a syllabus for a class that I’m about to take, I get hopeful. I think about how, in a semester, I will have mastered — or at least gotten thoroughly involved in — this part of the discipline of history or math or whatever. I’ll be right in the thick of it; I’ll have read about so much and thought about it so hard that I’ll be familiar with all the nuances, aware of all the special methodologies and concerned with the big, open questions. But, invariably, when I look back on the syllabus a semester later, I’m forced to acknowledge that I only ever end up engaging with a fraction of the material listed.
It’s most painful with the readings. Here I know that, in the four or five articles assigned any given week, there is almost endless room for exploration. I should be reading them all twice through, taking notes on the frame, slowly chewing on the meanings, finding connections and contradictions among the ideas. Unfortunately, this is rarely how things play out. I count it a good week when, for a 300-level class, I’ve done 25 percent of the readings one time through and skimmed another 25 percent, hurriedly, before precept. Even with this standard, my grades aren’t half bad. So does the system — the preceptor and professor, or whomever — actually approve of how little of the material I get my head around? Heck, in a moment of honesty, do I even approve of it?
Yes and no. Like I said, the ideal is that you read everything, think like crazy and come to understand, profoundly, whatever part of history or environmental policy or math the class covers. But, as you’ve no doubt said to yourself already, such an ideal is often impractical, there are other ways to get something worthwhile out of a class, without going crazy, and the sort of person who actually works that hard is a “total douchebag.” I agree with you (on everything except the last part), and presumably professors sometimes agree too: A well-arrayed class should make sure that someone who doesn’t engage the material through and through — but is willing to put in some baseline of effort — will not walk away empty-handed.
Some classes are better at doing this than others, and no doubt it is difficult to strike the correct balance. I think the best example is COS 126: General Computer Science, which I’m taking this semester. The lectures, textbook, precepts and course website are, together, a treasure trove of extra material: worked examples, external links, philosophical questions, articles and extra programs to write just for fun. I wish I were a freshman, with more time on my hands, able to take full advantage of all the resources. But, while I am not and cannot, the weekly programming assignments and precept exercises still guarantee that I’ll end up with a rudimentary set of programming skills — something that both I and the course organizers can feel good about.
Indeed, this is what I settle for in most of my classes: get an idea of the subject, learn some new ideas and techniques, and then move on. Even in my major, I often feel like I’m doing just this. Indeed, I fear this is, for most people, an inevitability of the liberal arts education: Depth is sacrificed for breadth.
Presumably, the Princeton thesis is a counterweight to this reality. There, at least, is one opportunity to delve far down, to leave no stone unturned. The point of a thesis, it seems, is to take up some question — any question; the specifics are less important — and get as deep and familiar with the material as possible. This is a nice cap to an education that, for all its strengths, is somewhat cursory.
Looking past this spring into the world out there, I wonder which will prove more important: the large number of classes we skimmed or the few times we dug deep. Some seniors are on their way to grad school, where depth and specialization is the name of the game. Some are on their way to consulting firms, where new projects come around with relative frequency. Some will be the jack-of-all-trades in start-ups, where they’ll need myriad skills but also vision and thorough understanding. Thankfully, the world is diverse enough that all dispositions can find a place in either.
Greg Burnham is a math major from Memphis, Tenn. He can be reached at gburnham@princeton.edu.
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