The University of
Chicago provides a strange combination of
intellectual brilliance and
intellectual masturbation. The former often resulting inadvertently from the latter.
It has been said by the late, great president of our esteemed alma mater, Hanna Gray that the university becomes dearer to us, the further away we are (presumably intellectually as well as physically). Indeed this is true.
Perhaps while wandering between matriculation and graduation, we fixate on small issues of great (sic) personal import. After the fact, we can objectively observe the institutional reality. Indeed, this could be said to be one of the great strengths of the university, that it prevents its students from altering their behavior based upon a societal view of their relavance. Were this not the case, students would know the absolute impossibility of their chosen tasks. As Douglas Adams so aptly stated, 'Since no one was there to tell them it couldn't be done, they went ahead and did it.'