Last week, I took a nap in one of those big comfy chairs in Tisch Library with my feet up on a round table and an open book resting against my chest. With 21st century amenities like wireless internet access and an in-house movie theater, Tisch library is engineered for comfort. It's a great place to nap between classes, meet your friends for coffee or even study.
The best part about the library, though, is the slanted edges on the tables for resting your book. Now you don't have to hold the book up or crane your neck to read the page. Someone has obviously put great thought into making our lives easy, convenient and comfortable.
But that's exactly the problem with our university experience. We're too darn comfortable.
The slanted table edges in Tisch Library is just one example. Most students don't have much more than 15 hours of class a week, 26 weeks per year, which translates into 4.3 percent of our time spent in class. That leaves plenty of time to play Madden, get drunk, eat pizza after the party and leave a mess for the custodial and grounds crew to clean up in the morning. And they do clean up after us.
That's not to say Tufts students don't work, but even work has become easier. With the Internet, a world of information is only a key stroke away. Want to read a brief synopsis about Latvia? Google it. You'll learn that Latvia is a state the size of West Virginia with about 2 million people who re-gained independence in 1991 and recently joined the EU. Congratulations.
The point is that everything you want to know about Latvia is right there in front of you. But this is all an abstraction, and the abstraction often seems closer than Harvard Square.
That's because we live in what has been diagnosed as the college bubble. As much fun as it is, the ivory tower of academia, when too far removed from the real world, can infect like a virus our way of thinking and acting. And for many students, myself included, college is too far removed from the real world. Our perspectives are skewed. Our opinions are warped. We are out of touch with how the world really works.
We have become jaded by comfort.
The problem with comfort - and stability and privilege and isolation - is that we grow weak, idle, soft and acquiescent. That is, we become content with what we have. We no longer have a reason to take daring risks in defense of our ideals or principles. We forget the meaning of revolution. I fear ours is a generation that has already forgotten.
Tocqueville said this more than 100 years ago in "Democracy in America": "I dread the audacity much less than the mediocrity of desires; what seems to me most to be feared is that in the midst of the small incessant occupations of private life [READ: playing too much Madden], ambition will lose its spark and its greatness."
And the fact that I'm quoting Tocqueville highlights the problem. The education I have been handed consists of book learning divorced from reality. It's all just a little too abstract and a little too comfortable.
Tufts claims to be educating the next generation of global leaders. But how does our privileged education inspire us to pursue higher ambition than self-interest? How is this protective bubble challenging us to stand up for our ideals? Where among us are the Abraham Lincolns, the Frederick Douglasses, the Susan B. Anthonys of today? And what good is our education if we have lost the will or motivation to put it to good use?
The fact of the matter is that our time in higher education is extremely valuable, if we make the most of it. That means training our minds to think critically about the problems of the world today and then working to solve those problems. The bubble is dangerous but important. Once we leave the college bubble, we must apply the skills and knowledge gained in it to the real world to achieve great things beyond securing our own comfort and self-interest. We must discover not only what our education can do for us, but what we can do for humanity.
Noah Trugman is a senior majoring in philosophy. He can be reached via e-mail at Noah.Trugman@tufts.edu.
