Strive to be wise
"We should all strive to become wise individuals. That starts with acquiring a workable knowledge base. That is what you have started here. As you continue on your life’s path, you should work with that knowledge, add to it, question it, and apply it in meaningful ways." – Professor Joseph Bruseo
Commencement 2023
Faculty Address
By JOSEPH BRUSEO
Professor of Biology
Recipient of the 2023 Elaine Marieb Chair for Teaching Excellence Award
"We are here today to recognize and celebrate your wonderful achievement, the awarding of your degree. You have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into the process, taking classes while juggling all of the other aspects of your life, all culminating in this day. You should feel a sense of pride and accomplishment and take time to revel in it. But you should not consider this an end to your journey. In many ways, your adventure is just beginning. Your education, either formally or practically, does not stop here. It is why this ceremony is called a commencement, a beginning. You acquired the skills and knowledge to move forward, to go out into the world and apply what you have learned. That is what your degree signifies - that you have achieved a level of basic technical and academic knowledge and developed a set of transferrable skills. How you apply the knowledge is up to you. You may continue on to a four-year program, or enter the workforce, or advance in your career. Regardless of your path, your learning must not end here.
Learning is a continuous process, something that develops and strengthens over time. It builds on itself, becoming more intricate and detailed as you progress. Think back to all of the courses you have taken here. You have been exposed to a lot of information. How will you use that knowledge? Is all of it important, or useful? While it may not be apparent now, it will have some utility in the future. Your college experience has also taught you valuable skills. You learned the importance of time management and meeting a deadline. You were given the opportunity to socialize, make friends and forge professional connections. Just as important, you were taught how to critically assess information, how to question its validity and application. There comes a point where knowledge leads to wisdom. Your educational experience is based in the accumulation of facts or other important information. Wisdom derives from both that knowledge and its context, those experiences you have in relation to the knowledge.
This is the initial step in the transition from knowledge to wisdom. Wisdom comes from the application of those facts, being able to assess what is true or right, and to apply the knowledge you have gained. As our knowledge base expands, our wisdom grows. Technology has been a boon to our education, but it can also be a crutch. It is very easy to Google a topic and find an answer - but is it the true answer? How accurate is the information you are being shown?
That is one of the beautiful things about an education - you learn to critically assess what you've been told, to determine if what you are hearing is accurate based on the knowledge you have. The cliché of "knowledge is power" is very true, particularly in the technological age in which we live, where information is available at the click of a button. It is also a way to question what you hear - does that sound right based on what you know? Is it possible to see that concept from a different perspective?
As we learn more about the world around us, our view changes - what has been accepted as fact may, in reality, be a skewed version of the truth.
There are many concepts that have been presented as constant, but that may just be because we are not assessing it from different perspectives. By assessing its validity, we can determine if what we observe is, in fact, true. This is what an education provides you - the ability to assess information and determine its validity, to question current knowledge, and pioneer new thought.
This is the link between knowledge and wisdom. So, what do you do with all of this knowledge you have accumulated? How much of what you learned in class do you remember? What are you able to actually recall? Quite often you may have felt overwhelmed by the amount of information presented to you in a course, and, once the class is over, there's a tendency to forget much of what you learned in our classes, unless you use that information beyond the classroom setting.
You are not going to remember all of the scientific names for the phyla of animals, or what happens during the chemical reactions of the Krebs cycle, or the flow of blood through all of the structures in the heart - unless it is something that you encounter once you leave here. Even then, there will be bits of information that you think you forgot, but believe it or not, they are tucked away in your memory and will come out again at the strangest times and places.
For example, you may be on Facebook and see a video that discusses cellular intelligence in a fungus (the acellular slime mold of the genus Physarum), and you may remember that in some phylogenies, fungi are considered the group of living things most closely related to the animals. This is knowledge that you may have forgotten, but when it comes up in a practical situation, you recall it.
Memory can be like an old photo album. The pictures (information) are there, but unless you look at them, you may forget about them. If you don't look at them for a while, they may start to fade. When you see them, you recall the circumstances around which they were taken.
Knowledge works in a similar way. We should all strive to become wise individuals. That starts with acquiring a workable knowledge base. That is what you have started here.
As you continue on your life's path, you should work with that knowledge, add to it, question it, and apply it in meaningful ways.
To quote the English poet William Cowper, "Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much. Wisdom is humble that he knows not more." Be proud you have learned so much, be humble that you know not more.
PHOTO: Professor Joseph Bruseo delivers the faculty address to the Class of 2023 at Commencement.
