Another story about the people at my office: this one is about the clerical ladies, the ones who have been there since the 1970s. Some of them really scare me. Why? As an eternal student, I’d like to think that education changes lives. Some of our clericals grew up in blue collar circumstances but went to college and graduated, only to fall back into the working class. There are others who had highly educated parents but never went to college, despite having the chance …

Well, OK, the world is a tough place, and not every college grad is going to catch the brass ring, i.e. an interesting and fulfilling professional career. But these women have become indistinguishable from the ones who never got beyond high school. They talk and act and think pretty much like the world from whence they sprung. They don’t seem to analyze things too deeply, they don’t seem interested in world events, they don’t seem to read many books, they don’t seem to peruse the New York Times during their coffee breaks. It’s as if they were put into a rocket ship and were boosted up to about 70 or 80 miles altitude, where they saw the edge of space for a little while, but then got pulled right back down to earth, like those first Mercury missions in the early 60s.

One of them told me her story. She got her degree and had the chance to become a teacher. She also wanted to get a masters degree. But her parents got sick and she had to take care of them, so she put everything on hold. After that she took a lot of vacation trips. So she never got around to starting a professional career. Sure, I can sympathize with her situation. But darn, did she also have to put her mind back to sleep? Couldn’t she have stayed interested in being a learner and a thinker, even if it wasn’t part of her clerical duties? Couldn’t she have resisted the peer pressure to rejoin the “Just Another Manic Monday” mentality of her co-workers?

For you lucky people still in school, what I’m saying is this: I really hope that you make it big and get a chance to use your mind to the fullest, and that you’re rewarded for it with lots of money and fame. But if things don’t quite work out and you don’t get such a career, don’t let your mind go to seed. Don’t let the fire of intellectual curiosity go out, even if everyone around you has become a zombie. Hey, I myself have a graduate education but my job could be done by most anyone with a 2-year associate degree. So I’m no great success story, but I’m not letting my mind fall back into the muck. It’s not that I believe that I’ll get my chance yet at the big time; it’s too late now for that. I just refuse to give up on the inherent goodness of mental enlightment, even if it doesn’t make me rich or famous. That’s the credo of an eternal student.