This is my first opinion column of the year, so let me begin properly — with a challenge to new and old students alike: question everything.

We come to the University of Wisconsin to learn. To submerge our minds in the alarmingly frigid well of intellectualism.

Wrong.

We come to UW — or ought to — to investigate the discoveries of those who came before us. To be led to that well of intellectualism and have its offerings presented to us for scrutiny. We do not attend to be tossed into that well headfirst where, encased in the dark, pressurized depths, we can make neither heads nor tails of our surroundings. So it’s unfortunate that the desire to pass our classes often results in we students purposefully setting ourselves on autopilot, consuming class materials at face value because that’s how we’ll earn the best grade. I won’t lie, when it comes to an exam or a paper, I will happily chant back material (as long as it is morally uncontroversial) to a professor in order to get the best grade possible.

But is this enough? A necessary question.

We all want to get jobs immediately following the conclusion of our studies. This can’t be argued. This is the main reason we attend college. We want to be bettered by our time at UW, by the experience we gain here, by our degrees and to add to our resumes. We want UW to help us develop ourselves into valuable assets that will be picked up by companies and institutions afterwards. As is common knowledge nowadays, however, for an alarming number of degrees, there is no guarantee of employment after graduation. What we are taught at UW, including all those classes that accumulate into a degree, is not in and of itself sufficient to make us valuable to employers. So what is?

Specialization. How do we achieve this among so much competition? Great question.

I challenge and advise you to question everything — within reason, of course. If you dig into the material you’re taught, if you more than memorize it, if you engage with it (an overused phrase, I know), disagree with it, really question the brains out of it, whether it’s in the realm of the scientific or of the humanities, you will come to new understandings. You will make new discoveries. You will individualize your knowledge, specialize your insight and make yourself uniquely valuable. When you graduate with that biology degree, you will be prepared to advance the world’s understanding in that field of knowledge. You will be ready to revolutionize old, dead-end ideas. When you graduate with that history degree, you won’t be another university-produced automaton, a mere replica of other students who have attended the same classes and completed identical studies under the same professors who have lent a blinding number of students their interpretations of history.

At the end of your time in Madison, or wherever your studies take you, you will have something to offer the world, something entirely unique to you. And that, I believe, is one of the most valuable products you’ll reap from your studies. Not proof that you can learn what is already known elsewhere, but proof that you can contribute new knowledge to a world hungering for it.

Let your studies enhance your knowledge and sharpen your innate abilities, not swamp them in rote learning that may or may not culminate in a profitable degree.

Those are my wise words to you. Study as you need to in order to succeed in college, but take the extra step. Diversify your bag of tricks. Practicing careful deliberation and growing a conscience can only lead you to new opportunities.

Step off the conveyor belt. Don’t be an intellectual automaton. Because inevitably, all robots rust and become obsolete in the face of newer models.

Theresa Cooley ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English.