Rockford University professor Stephen Hicks’s advice to new students

Yet those words do capture essential aspirations for education, especially for those of us at the kind of college Rockford is and can be. I want to focus here on excellence.

All of my education was at large state schools in the Canada and the United States. My freshman psychology class had about 600 students. I sat toward the back of a huge auditorium, and I never did get a clear sense of what my professor looked like. Other classes were similar. Most of my tests were graded by machines or graduate students. I had no complaints, and I received a good education at a well-regarded university in Canada.

When I came to Rockford University it was a revelation to me what was possible at a liberal arts college.

You usually get what you pay for, and Rockford University charges its students a lot. That pays for small classes and one-on-one conversations with professors who are actually good at teaching. It pays for all of the time it takes for professors to make comments on term papers and grade essay exams, work with students in labs, and offer personalized feedback on creative art and writing projects.

After I had adjusted to Rockford University, I came to think of it like this: Rockford University at its best takes the liberal part of liberal arts education seriously. It takes seriously the education free men and women require. This raises a very philosophical question: What is it to educate free human beings?

One component of freedom is social: Not being subject to authoritarian dictates. We live in a democratic republic, and we take our freedoms seriously. Part of education, then, involves teaching people to be self-governing citizens — individuals who can form sound judgments about complicated matters, who have confidence in their judgments and the initiative to act upon them, and who have the independence of spirit that doesn’t let others push them around.

Another component of freedom is cognitive. Ignorant individuals cannot live a fully free life. Knowledge is a form of power, and power extends the range of your freedom. A well-educated person has the knowledge and skills to explore freely the exciting things being accomplished in the arts, the humanities, and the natural and social sciences.

An excellent college integrates those two components. It maximizes student contact with expert professors, and it creates a liberal environment of vigorous inquiry and exploration.

That, however, is the easier part of education. What a college does for its students is important, but the hard part is what students do themselves. Excellence in education happens only when students decide to make it happen. Good teachers and encouragement are nothing to a student who does not have an active and passionate mind.

An active mind is an act of free will. It is the choice to open your mind to what the world has to offer and to maintain that attitude of open-minded seeking. That can be hard to do — to cultivate your natural curiosity until it becomes habitual, to overcome the laziness, the fear of making mistakes, the fear of having to change your opinions, and the other self-defeating habits that lead some people to shut down their minds. Developing the habits of free and active thinking is the hardest part of education, but it is the only habit that makes excellence possible.

Passion is the other key. Excellence does not happen without passion.

In my experience, students sometimes think of education as a duty. They think of going to classes and writing papers as chores they have to do because the professor says so. Naturally this way of thinking drains any passion the student has for education.

Or sometimes students think of education in strictly instrumental terms, as a series of hoops to be jumped through so as to get a job that will pay the bills. This too drains any passion.

The best response to both of these is a point that is easy to forget: No one has to go to college, attend class, write essays and exams. College is about choosing to explore and grow — and lectures and labs, essays and exams are how you explore and grow.

I think of athletes and actors here. Athletes do not see working out as a duty: they enjoy practicing their sport, knowing at the same time it is preparing them for the big game. Actors do not see rehearsal as a chore put upon them: they love trying out roles, knowing at the same time it is preparing them for opening night.

Classes, essays, and exams in college are like rehearsals for actors and scrimmages for athletes: they are a chance to grow and to test yourself in a safe environment. So throw yourself into your classes the way that athletes and actors throw themselves into their passions.

That is also how you find your passion. Not all of us will be athletes or actors – but it is crucial to each of us to find that career about which we can feel the way athletes and actors feel about theirs. A year has fifty-two weeks. There is a difference between working for fifty weeks doing something you do not love and then having two weeks of vacation to do what you really want — versus having a career you are passionate about.

For me it turned out to be Philosophy. It took me a lot of exploration before I found it: Philosophy was my fifth choice of major after Architecture, Engineering, Theater, and Political Science. Each student follows a different path, but the same point holds for everyone: Jump in and explore the various academic worlds for awhile until you find the one that clicks. But really jump in and explore.

When you find the thing that you are passionate about, you will enjoy doing the hard work that it takes to become excellent. That will pay off in both the short- and the long-run: You will have a challenging, frustrating, and exhilarating college experience — and you will increase your chances that your whole career and life will be of the same excellent quality.

[Originally published in Decus, Spring 2004.]