Lately, everyone seems to speak as if spending time on classwork is like washing the dishes: do it quickly so you can move on. If a friend says they are going to the library to work on a paper, I offer sympathy: “That sucks.” And when I head off to seminar, they extend their condolences: “I’m sorry.”
Claremont’s dialect around academics defaults to conjecture. Sometimes, in the midst of the menial work that almost inevitably comes with college, this discourse feels fair. But this is precisely why it is important not to succumb to the belief that all work must be like this — to seek out the instances when work defies bullshit and becomes exciting.
Ask any 5C student a question or two about their courses, and they will likely start gushing about how their Bible class is “actually really interesting” and how they “can’t wait to get to the New Testament.” Sincere interest resides just beneath the exterior of many 5C students’ complaints, and I believe it sustains these campuses’ fervent academic pace.
But partaking in unsolicited distaste of class and classwork threatens our ability to develop a satisfying relationship with our work. While this collective habit is understandable, it also keeps us stuck. Our language can either nurture or impede us in fostering meaningful work throughout college. Choosing our language carefully is crucial if we want to triumph over bullshit work.
Realistically, much, even most, of our time perishes to meaningless academic labor that is absolutely worthy of our condemnation. I’m talking about the bloated readings, hollow reflections, administrative emails and the uncontested champion: discussion posts. This assembly-line of tasks is suspiciously good preparation for what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs,” where bureaucratic button-pressing takes the place of substantive thinking. We can agree that this kind of work ought to be met with dismay.
Although college work mirrors much of what Graeber references as bullshit, the truth is that not all of it does. But our passing conversations show a failure to separate our condemnations from what we cherish. This habit only amplifies work exhaustion and minimizes the chance that we end up with anything positive to say about college and our time here.
My three years at the Claremont Colleges can be thought of as a course of discovery toward rewarding questions. But the path is marked by obstacles and frustrations. Connection with work, where school feels real, did not seek me out. I wandered across the expanse of hyperschedule as California’s State Reptile, the desert tortoise, does the Mojave Desert: semi-fruitlessly.
I’ve realized I can’t bear another bio lab: the hours of student presentations (why is it that we present them to each other?) and days chartering a class code of conduct (what does respect mean to you?). I’ve changed course so many times, from an environmental science major to an environmental design major, environmental policy and political studies. We are tasked with meeting graduation requirements for majors we approach with earnest, but likely theoretical, interest. Consolidating those budding curiosities into a genuine intellectual connection feels secondary; maybe it will occur incidentally, but it’s never a primary goal.
This tumult is exhausting and only occasionally rewarding. All this work feels like a trial of my capabilities where the sole mission becomes crossing the finish line.
As desert tortoises, we all travel the academic landscape, meeting our duties, slugging through a slew of soulless tasks until, finally, purpose emerges. It’s still work, but it can become more than work, assuming a sequence of clues that inch you closer, not just to your baccalaureate, but to answering your big questions.
The external layer of negative sentiment keeps us from our own curiosity; it keeps us from becoming the detectives of our own academic lives. It’s difficult to develop a connection with work, but harder still when your friend “hates that professor.” Premature disdain makes us wary; maybe we go into each class or assignment pinching our noses, ready to wash the dishes, or perhaps we are simply more ready to succumb to antagonism once we encounter a dry reading or two.
By surrendering, we minimize something invaluable, the sole factor that gets us out of this mess: possibilities.
With every class and assignment, there is a chance to uncover or clarify even just a granule of what’s important to you. This prospect animates all of academic life, making hollow work worth wading through. The words we use as a community can create the conditions for this; we should uplift, not weigh down, intellectual possibilities for each other.
We need to swap our prejudice against class with curiosity. Next time someone bids farewell to go to class, don’t spill unsolicited lamentation, ask them if they like that class. And if such lamentation is spilled on you, correct it.
Once you’ve gotten to the point where you can’t even separate what others like and what they don’t — when all classwork is deemed regrettable — you’ve already accepted defeat and resigned yourself to bullshit work.
To linguistically parse the good from the bad is not so much courtesy as it is an insistence that classwork is not all burdensome preparation for more professional, more real work. To accept this is depressing. Don’t stop looking for this genuine intellectual connection; keep roaming, oh desert tortoise.
Though the reward of reading 100 pages is remote indeed, we must allow that intellectual satisfaction to take root. We must be determined to enjoy class.
Luca Davis PZ ’27 finally figured out college.
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