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Show There are two rewards available as a matter of free choice to the person who aspires to the academic life, whether it be for a single four-year period or as a career. First, there is that gift of study which teaches a man that he is not alone. It is a sense of history, a realization that reading in itself is the active part each scholar must take in furthering the one demonstratably valid theory of immortality conceived by mortal minds - which is the written communication of ideas. In this, simply pausing in the act of searching for the truth by means of invention, to read of other men's searches, a scholar can find a community of spirit and sense of vital identity with men who long ago anticipated his problems.In a sense, the second reward of study is the most valuable thing a student can derive from his university experience. It is a loss of personal identity. It means that to find a most mature, most personally valuable sense of direction and awareness of the definition of self in an indifferent universe, a student must cast off many of the aspects of his own character which he might never have known were merely prejudices had he not willingly taken on the task of scholarly introspection. When a student can do this, and then, in the vacuum of skepticism, reconstruct for himself a system of values which allows for continuing amendment, he has ceased being a student and has become a scholar.Doyle Green |