Knowledge Happens
April 30, 2010
I’ve been out of academia for about seven years now, and I miss it terribly. Academia provides more than just a place for focused learning, though I love it for that reason alone; it is also a place where knowledge happens, where dialogue, study, inquiry, research, creativity and the like contribute to the production of knowledge. Academia is home to knowledge as an event. There knowledge isn’t merely found; it happens.
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As a multitasker, I like to listen to history/science audiobooks while driving or photoshopping. For the collegiate feel, I recommend podcasts such as UC Berkeley’s, they have whole semesters worth of classes. I remember classes in Vienna fondly, law not so much (every professor a sociopath), but the debates in philosophy (Nietzsche, Sartre, Adorno) and musicology were always a delight.
My own experience has been somewhat different. I left academia twelve years ago and have never looked back. All the time I was there, I never got over the feeling that academia was a place where knowledge was isolated, locked up, confined — relegated to a select group of people who had the background and understanding to comphrehend the esoteric papers I was producing. I work in the medical device industry now, and I am much happier with the thought that I can use the knowledge I have to help people from all walks of life — even the ones who have no understanding of the knowledge itself.
This is in no way meant to denigrate those in academia, because I do believe that adding to the body of knowledge is a noble task. I simply realized very early in my career that it was not my personal calling to be part of that effort.