The neuroscientist Joe Dispenza once said, “Knowledge without experience is called philosophy and experience without knowledge is called ignorance.” Success is unreachable for those who must choose between knowledge or experience. The values that higher education upholds should always include the pursuit of recreational curiosity. It is the only way for the complex dynamic of knowledge and experience to coexist. The persistence required to earn a degree is admirable, albeit it leaves the student as yet another student ID number lost in a matrix of others who had the same dreams. To only follow a state approved curriculum is to still mold the mind to that of societal expectation. Our consciousness is layered with astronomical potential. It is activated by our own pursuit of further self-awareness and understanding of the world around us. To have one foot on the path of least resistance and the other on the path less traveled is a noble pursuit.
Unknown variables can be terrifying when you are the function being tested on. Society has ingrained into us that if we attend college, if we sit down and do the work, that we will graduate and gracefully slide into our career path and not just another job. Students enter the work force with an archive of graded exams, yet tend to lack experience to show for their time and efforts. The expectation of career has shifted in recent years — it is no longer enough to sit comfortably and follow a syllabus. The most opportunistic doors only open for those curious enough to search for them.
Reflecting on fear and the connotations tied to that, it invokes vulnerability in a student. If experience without knowledge is ignorance, that is to say that pursuit of self exploration is simply a double-blind study where we cannot feel stable with such fresh information. We do not understand it and it does not understand us. Now the other side of the coin: if knowledge without experience is philosophy, that is to say that the entirety of an academic degree without application leaves the student as nothing more than a theorist. It is a skill to conjure up a relationship with knowledge and immerse it into reality. The scientific method may have never prepared students for the fact that they are now the dependent variable of their independent decisions. The romanticization of genius constantly idolized in academia is nothing more than the ability to cultivate knowledge and experience. Growing pains earned their name for a reason; change is uncomfortable and there cannot be expectation to what will happen once the discomfort has passed. There is beauty in the pursuit of the unknown.