Something fairly common among graduate and doctoral students is the feeling of being an academic fraud. What do I mean by “academic fraud”? An academic fraud is a person who writes papers, gets degrees, teaches classes, but who really isn’t worth his salt. They are just regurgitating other people’s ideas with no original thoughts of their own or, worse, they are saying new things which are just foolish, unhelpful, and ought not even to be printed. Many a grad student has questioned whether he or she can possibly have anything of value to add to the world of academia.
To be perfectly honest, though, I fear the person who doesn’t ever feel this way far more than I fear the person who does. The blissfully arrogant and ignorant fool (who thinks having some letters after his name makes him an expert in everything) is infinitely worse than the person who is unsure if they can add anything of value to the world. I should say that the arrogant student has far less to offer than he thinks and quite often the confidence-lacking student has far more than he realizes.
A good education is a humbling education.
If you have the desire to be in the realm of academics, to write books, to publish papers, and to teach in classrooms, and you haven’t felt inadequate to the job at some point, then I would suggest your education has failed you. Speaking anecdotally, I know that my time among the giants (from Homer to C. S. Lewis) has certainly made me think at times, “What could I possibly say that would even come close? Why should I write anything at all when everything I could say has already been said and said a thousand times better than I could say it?” Indeed, what could any of us set next to Dante, Shakespeare, or Milton, to Augustine, Aquinas, or Calvin, to Austen, Dickens, or Dostoyevsky, without feeling everlasting shame by comparison?
But herein lies the whole issue, that ought not to be anyone’s goal. In fact anyone who thinks of themselves as “the next (insert luminary here)” is a pompous windbag and should stay away from education. There are far too many people like this in academia already who have made it their career to exalt their own name, toot their own horn, and become “important.” We don’t need any more of them.
So then, what should be our goal as academics? Love. Our goal should be to foster a love for what is worthy of being loved. Attuning our own hearts affections toward what is true, good, and beautiful and helping others do the same. Why get a college degree, a graduate degree, or a doctoral degree? To know more about the things we should love! To be in wonder about what has happened throughout history! To marvel at the things God has made in the natural world! To lose ourselves in stories both new and ancient that teach us to love virtue and hate vice! To see the beauty of the mathematical mind of God! And so on.
Sure, it’s fine to want a career to spring from your studies. No, your education doesn’t have to be completely un-utilitarian. Certainly, however, if you are just using education for the purpose of self-exaltation then you are not getting a good education at all.
So, are you an academic fraud? You are only an academic fraud when you present yourself as someone important. You are an academic success when you recognize that you are no one special. You are academic fraud when you think you have a completely original idea and owe it all to your own genius. You are an academic rockstar when you help other people learn about the greatest ideas and minds which have come before us. You’re a fraud if you think the works of the past are outmoded and not worth your time. You are a genuine scholar when you are grateful for everything they have taught you.
Don’t be the young punk who doesn’t respect his elders. Be the reverent youth who humbly listens, asks questions, and cautiously offers thoughts thereafter. I promise you that this is the path to actually saying something worth hearing. Our words are worth hearing when we are conscious of the fact that they are not really our own. Our words are a product of the many voices which have spoken into our soul as we have listened lovingly and attentively at the feet of giants.
Ironically it is such people who usually end up being the most ingenious and inventive. There may really be nothing new under the sun, but the sun sets and rises again on new days which need to hear timeless truths once again. God gives audiences to new men and women in each generation who need to keep on saying what other good men and women have said before them. The truth is that everyone ought to go read them and not us, but they don’t know that until someone tells them.
The goal of the modern academic should be to connect the present with the past and to simply and reverently join in the great conversation. We are to love what deserves to be loved and to help others love it too.