Juan David's Newsletter - August 28th, 2022
In a world of crazy people, the sane ones are “crazy.”
Morning,
This week was entertaining. The first week of classes and as usual, I keep going with my streak of pissing professors off. If I was trying, I wouldn’t be as successful.
Last year, a professor tells me to switch majors out of fury. Last semester, another professor tells me to drop out.
And this semester, a professor tells me to … that’s what we are going to talk about today.
This semester is one of the best yet because I stopped caring about requirements and majors and I started seeing classes as a menu in a restaurant.
As you can imagine things get really interesting really fast. My order includes main dishes such as Aerospace Propulsion and Spacecraft Design. Desserts such as Computational Linguistics, Art History, and Theory of Knowledge. As well as a few other mathematical entrés such as Linear Algebra.
As interesting as it gets for me. It also gets interesting for professors and administrators. Maybe a type of “interesting” they don’t seem to be able to process.
There’s a whole menu of classes and anyone should be able to take whatever class the hell they want just like you may want to order any dish you want. But nope, that is not how things work there are prerequisites and major requirements.
I care about learning. I don’t care whether I get the credit. Technically nothing stops me from taking any classes without getting credit (auditing).
I say “technically” because it turns out there are screwed-up people who restrict learning even further.
Since I’m taking whatever interesting classes I want, I found this mechanical engineering class that seemed cool. The professor had created a few companies and my “interestingness radar” turned on.
The UIUC Talkshow cohost, Aaryaman, told me about it on Wednesday and how there was this class but the professor does not want to let him register for it. We also knew that on Monday he had kicked unregistered people out of the class.
We had been warned and but I still didn’t care so Aaryaman and I decided to show up anyway.
To mess with this evil professor even further, we sat in the front row so he would never suspect. Before class starts, he pulls up his roaster and starts taking attendance. I couldn’t believe it but we keep quiet and he didn’t realize.
The class starts and we’re there thinking whether he’ll realize and kick us out. Throughout the class, we want to start to raise our hands to ask questions or say what we think but we don’t because he would have realized.
I disagreed with the professor philosophically on so many levels but I could learn so much from him, especially about starting engineering companies so we stayed quiet.
This professor was someone who only focused on solving problems and doing what was practical. He claims that engineers are conservative and do what has only been done before. “Why take the risk?” he claims.
This view isn’t wrong. It’s fine. But the world isn’t advanced by these people. They claim that they only solve problems and that life is about solving problems. But that is not what life is about. Life is more beautiful than that. It’s about fully living and using your mind to create the future you may want no matter how impractical and crazy it may seem.
The practical people may make money but they never will make it into the history books. They will never push the human race forward. Still, I could see how much I could learn from him, especially because of how strongly I disagreed with him.
The class ends and Aaryaman and I take a big sigh because the professor didn’t realize.
We walked out and we think, “It will be a matter of time when he realizes so you might as well go up to him and ask if he could let us in the class.”
Before I go though, I tell Aaryaman to stay back because fires may start and if that happens, neither of us would be able to attend the class. The cohost still decides to come.
So I go and start by saying, “Professor, can we chat for a moment?”
He said “Yes.” And we start walking together. I explain that I understand he doesn’t like people to audit his class… He cuts me and immediately replies “That’s not true, the class is full and it would be too hard to catch up.”
Both are wild lies as I was literally sitting in the class 5 minutes ago and the first homework had just been released.
So I said both of those things and tell him that I’d like to take his class and learn from him. He replies “I’m flattered but the class is mostly group projects so you’d interrupt the class.”
I tell him that I’d be ok with leaving when group projects are happening.
He quickly realizes two things: 1) he wasn’t going to bullshit me easily and 2) I was not going to take a “no” for an answer.
So tension starts rising but we keep walking. I continue to explain that I’d like to the class and that I don’t need the credit. I’d like to just learn.
He starts to get mad and says “I’m sorry you can’t take this class. Yeah, sorry.”
At this point, I’m like what is the actual FU**?
He does not give a shit and will not let anyone take his class unless registered. So the endgame starts.
The conversation is nearing an end and he just wants me off of him so I start by saying, “I understand engineers are conservative (something he repeatedly said in class) but would you rather kill someone’s curiosity to learn than modify the system?”
A few moments after:
He obviously didn’t like it and said, “Now you’re arguing for arguing’s sake. The world is a big place. Do something else.”
He goes quiet and looks at me. I got even quieter and look at him straight in the eyes without blinking. 30 seconds passed. He gets uncomfortable and leaves by saying “Have a good day.”
The story doesn’t end there. It keeps going.
We could not believe that actually had happened. We were surprised, to say the least.
Aaryaman and I went into reflection mode for the next two hours. We didn’t get what we wanted so it was unsuccessful but why? Could there have been a better way to say it? Probably. Was he going to let anyone take the class? Pretty sure he wasn’t.
These days everyone is focused on practicality that we’ve forgotten about style. My endgame was far from practical but had style. He’ll never forget it. Was that “smart” or “emotionally intelligent”? Probably not but style matters a lot more.
Bad questions will give a bad answer. Perhaps, I could have asked a better question such as: “What can I do to learn about the class without taking the class?”
But the thing is, no matter how good of a question I could have come up with, the whole situation was bad because the professor didn’t want to. Therefore, a bad situation will always lead to bad questions and bad questions will lead to bad answers.
We also reflected on how hard these college people try to restrict knowledge. Learning has to be free and self-directed yet we have these made-up barriers in place. Nuts! Why aren’t classes free online? This question turns out to be dangerous (more below).
A big sigh and another “fight” starts. Not a really fight but a huge effort to convince mindless administrators to let me do what I want.
There is this super cool Spacecraft Design class taught by an ex-NASA engineer that I wanted to take. But of course, that’s not my major nor have the prerequisites. The professor is cool and had said yes but for some reason, he wanted me to talk to the administration to get credit for it.
And I can already imagine how this is going to go.
I take a deep breath and go talk to this lady. I introduce myself and the conversations start. I explain I want this class and she quickly starts making the weirdest faces I’ve ever seen in my life. She was confused and even offended I wanted to take this class. Why? No idea.
She pulls up my transcript and gets even more confused. She starts turning red and looking back and forth between me and her computer. She didn’t say it explicitly but the rough tone of her voice and her bewildered face yelled, “What the hell is this kid going to with his life?”
She could see how many math, computer science, and physics classes I had taken, and she could not understand why I would ever want to take aerospace classes. I suppose she had never met an incurably curious1 person.
I didn’t say a word while this was happening. A few minutes later, she says that we will need more time to talk about this. She said she needed to go and I promptly left.
At this point, it was already 5:00 PM and I keep thinking to myself, “Am I not entertained?” Holy cow! Things keep happening and while I’m enjoying every minute of it, I start getting mentally overstimulated because it was already too much entertainment.
So why is learning restricted? Why aren’t classes uploaded online per se? We have this question so we think, “Who could better answer such a question than the big dog at the engineering school, the Dean?”
We looked up his addresses and here we were on our way to talk to him and ask why knowledge is restricted. We found his office but there were two barriers of assistants asking why we were there and why exactly we wanted to talk to him. He wasn’t there so we couldn’t talk to him. So we emailed him and his other assistant is confused about why we wanted to talk to him. They are still confused but supposedly, we might get a meeting with him in a few weeks.
So this is what I have to go through to learn, specialize in my curiosity, and do what I want to do. I write this not to complain and for you to feel bad about me. Quite on the contrary, I feel exceptional. If anything these interactions give more reasons to keep going because you know you are doing something right when you face that much pushback.
I write this because I’m sure there will be people out there bravely following their curiosity and the world will make them believe that they are crazy and they are wrong. But no, you are doing the right thing.
Don’t ever forget this:
In a world of crazy people, the sane ones are “crazy.”
Classes started and look at how packed the streets are. The bikes and scooters are slowers than walking. Another reason why we need personal flying vehicles!
The first few days were bumpy like the one I just described but on Thursday and Friday, I started to feel more at ease and ready to have another great semester. I’m beyond excited about the new opportunities and the things that will happen yet I have no idea they will because life is like that, more than great. It’s excellent and … entertaining.
Until next Sunday,
Juan David Campolargo
🎵 Song I listened to while writing this: Back To The Future.
Inspired by Salma’s Twitter Bio.