Liberal Arts Winnowing

On a slightly less poetic and more personal note, I wanted to say that this week, I am tossing all the work I did from four years of undergrad study. 

Well...this is a slight exaggeration, of course. I am only recycling about a dozen bulging binders and notebooks and thousands of pages of inked cursive notes, glancing through them as I go. It's the bulk of my undergrad work (Major: English Literature with a Writing Emphasis. Minor: Philosophy), but it's not the whole of it. The poems I wrote and the speculative fiction novella that was my thesis, for example, I still have printed out in a filing cabinet and in digital format (WordStart converted to text and then Word, I believe); and there are a few other things scattered here and there.

Years ago, I had thought that if I ever forgot all that I learned at college, I could re-read my notes and remind myself. Re-learn if necessary. But these notes were taken before the web existed as we know it. I'm getting rid of things like photocopied chapters from books and even some mimeograph pages, all full of information I could find again now either online or through the library. 

But more importantly, I believe that I also have been keeping these things as a sort of ego prop. Look what I did! Look at all those notes, and how neat my penmanship was, and how well I did on essays and tests! Really, it's as though I had these papers as a backup plan in case I needed to prove something to myself and to others. Even now, throwing them away, I called my younger daughter into the room witness all that effort going into recycle. Just so someone can see that I had a thorough liberal arts education, and that I was present for it. That I worked hard.

But now, I don't need those papers. I just don't. What I studied, whether I retained any of it or not (consciously or subconsciously), was a foundation for what I know now and helped shape who I am. I don't need paper work for that to be true. And if I need to know something about any of the many things I studied, I will find the answer online. Unless technology completely failed us, I would never have been finding answers by going through my old notes anyway. (Although I will say that if technology did fail us, there would be worse places to turn to than the works of Homer, Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare.) 

I may save a few things that seem, still, more important than all the others. But I'll be going from a heavy bankers box of binders to a folder or two. How much lighter I'll be!