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E-PrinceIt's that time of year. Once again, we have to decide what the heck we are doing with our time here. In other words, its course pickin' time. This time around, though, is a lot more stressful since I ...(back to the article)
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You ought to offer more justification if you allege that academics tend to rest on their laurels once they make it into the club.
"Yet, all it took was for the Major Choices initiative to tell students that "Hey, it's OK if you want to follow your passion and study philosophy" and presto - the size of the department increased dramatically."
Bradlow seems to be forgetting that the average salary for 2007 PHI grads was higher than for any other major. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were a big reason why the department spiked. That's not to say that these philosophy majors were motivated by the desire to make lots of money; rather, I'm saying that they felt more justified in majoring in philosophy because they saw the capability of making money in it.
I'd agree with PHI major, but other than that: hear, hear!
I have been out of Princeton for 3 years now and very far removed of the "establishment" - most of the people I work with went to 2 year technical colleges. I have thought alot about what a Princeton education is (which perhaps may not be so apparent if you are surrounded by a like kind in law firms, grad schools, Wall Street, etc):
- The Ability to explore almost anything - this is both in the form of faculty encouragement as well as financial grants
- The support and participation in extra curricular activities. When I look at skills that I use in my current job, most of them come from what I learned outside of the classroom - either from planning activities, figuring out budgets, reviewing applications, providing feedback. These are all skills that many of my colleagues do not have, because all they did in school was academics.
- The ability to learn about whatever you want. You can take any class you want, you can attend any afternoon lecture that you want. No one will stop you and they are all open to you. Many people I worked with took classes only in their major and the opportunity to go to outside lectures did not exist.
And so perhaps there is an establishment, and perhaps we don't challenge authority as much as we should - although I think there is also an overlooked difference between challenging authority and taking meaningful actions about an issue.
So go and get your princeton education - take what is interesting to you, become involved, because much learning happens there. And take a huge leap when you leave a take a job where you can use those skills to their fullest.