I love the way Frankenstein depicts intellectual life. Victor is an ambitious and talented student who seems to spend his time toting a stack of books around and taking in a few lectures anytime they’d strike his fancy. “Oh,” he’d say to himself as he passed a bulletin board in the quad, “Professor Paddlebottom is speaking on neuroscience at noon. I’ll have just enough time to sit in before we discuss that new Hegel pamphlet at tea.”

Is that how school used to be? Nowadays it seems my grad school chums keep busy reading dense books and then going to class twice a week, a routine that isn’t nearly as enticing as Victor’s. They’re reading enviably alright, and certainly having lively conversations in the taverns, but how much livelier would the intellectual climate be if universities were completely without structure?

Certainly there are more opportunities to invest myself in Milwaukee’s brainy community. What lectures are open to the public at UW-M? Why haven’t I stopped by the Tolkien exhibit at Marquette? Why don’t I carry a stack of books over to the coffee shop and sit for a spell? The public museum is free on Mondays.

Instead, I’ve become sort of an anti-intellectual who cringes whenever someone mentions Lacan at film viewings. I’m forgetting every nugget of Kierkegaard I used to cherish so that when I ask a Master’s student what he knows about the Dane, I’m shocked to hear a substantial summary (that would surely leave Søren cold) following a statement that he knows almost nothing about the subject. I love the occasions when I used to sneak into academic conferences where I understood almost nothing but still felt the jouissance that comes from—as Alanis Morrisette put it—intellectual intercourse. Those days seem to have come and gone. Now I’m eagerly looking for that bulletin board that Dr. Frankenstein must have strolled up to every morning.

After six or seven years traveling from Harvard to Glasgow to the University of Chicago in post-graduate bliss, Bill Brower confided to me that he felt as though he’d finally earned his bachelor’s degree. Perhaps he was being falsely modest, but I understand the sentiment completely. There was a time when someone was either “college material” or he wasn’t, and there was nothing to be ashamed of either way. I simply don’t think I was, or am, of the higher education breed. After “earning” a BA in English, I feel like I’m just about ready to start my junior year in high school. I’d be a top-notch student, certainly, but I honestly think that’s where I ought to be.

I must have written a horrendous paper for Dr. McGuire in my third year at ONU because she suggested I retake the basic composition class. I was too proud to even consider her suggestion, though, or to even think that she meant it as more than another jab at me on account of how “different” I was. I rarely don’t regret not taking her advice, though, if only to learn not to write sentences like this one. I’d love to have another shot at college, to earn good grades and take valuable internships. I’d love to see where that would put me in today’s job market.

The job market is the real test, unfortunately, because opportunities for academic growth outside of a degree program are rare in my town. All that anyone does is go to art shows and prattle on about Lacan. Maybe I should move to 18th century Ingolstadt, or, I guess, read a book.