It’s a dog help dog world

two yellow labrador retriever puppies
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Junior year is tough. It comes with five hours of homework (on an average night, mind you), weekends absorbed by SAT’s and ACT’s, and a sense of hopelessness after the grades remain stagnant after all of this effort. With so much pressure, one would expect a sense of competition in school. After all, if there is a curve to the class, who would want to lend a helping hand to a struggling friend? The truth, as it turns out, is a lot less cynical.

Camaraderie, not competition, is the law of the land. If you understand a notion, you are expected to share it with your fellow students. My high school has a facebook group for its AP and Honor classes, and all one has to do is post a question and within seconds, responses fill up the comments section. There, open-source student-created study guides are shared and edited, and educational links run amok.

Well, this is kind of like a flower blossoming in a desert. Why would the students who understand the material help out their friends, if, by doing so, they are hurting their own curve? There are students with a B who really need that A, but they will lend a hand to their C-earning friends the night before the test. Where’s the logic in that?

The answer is simpler than I would like to admit, and thus most people are skeptical of it; it’s natural to be social. Being efficient and brilliant might make you an amazing robot, but not a human being. There is something wonderfully imperfect about someone who shares a study guide with their friends while simultaneously hurting their own curve. “I’ll earn that A without a curve, and I’ll help my friends at the same time.” There is also a personal sense of accomplishment when someone who doesn’t understand a concept suddenly gets it because of the way you worded it. The light in their eyes when all the cogs fit is something the teacher inside all of us can appreciate.

Plus, it makes studying a social experience. Sitting at a lonely desk and jotting down notes is a mindset of the past. If you want questions answered, type it up on facebook. Boom, boom, boom. Within seconds, some philanthropic genius has answered your query.

Along with Facebook, there are regular study sessions where chapters are reviewed by students (completely unprompted or regulated by any teachers). Anytime anyone does not understand a concept, someone in the group will explain, and they will have an audience at their feet. Brilliance takes place in the public arena, not alone, taking notes at home. As my math teacher used to say, “You don’t know it until you can teach it to someone.”

There are skeptics galore of this mentality. When I talk to someone from a more competitive school about the way we study, they look at me like I need immediate medical attention. For some reason, they always quote Darwin, “Survival of the fittest”. We’re not a flock of finches. We’re human beings, and it is in our blood to be social.

School is not as ugly as it has become for many students. Getting an a good grade is, to a degree, a communal effort. In Honors and AP classes, students go more in-depth and learn more because we work together most of the time. If we were working on the same curriculum, but alone, we would fail. If there is any progress, it is by being a cohesive whole. That’s what genius is made of. Being brilliant isn’t a sign of being human; sharing brilliance is.

Nikhil

I like to think I'm an interesting character. I love listening to movie soundtracks as much as I love listening to Eminem, and I hate chocolate almost as much as I hate cake. Most importantly however, I like to write. Whether it be poetry, a column, or a blog, I lose track of time doing it. I hope I can give similar joy to my readers :D

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One thought on “It’s a dog help dog world

  1. Aid people because one wants to be social?

    One goes from competition being the law of the land back to camaraderie being the law of the land with your above logic. Now let’s go further from camaraderie… back into competition.

    I often aid people because I know that doing so helps me study. It ends up, after a little thought, that I come to the conclusion that everything I do I do for myself. Why help someone on the internet? It’s an ego boost. Philanthropic genius? Perhaps. Perhaps someone who understands enough in his field to help those who are beginning in the field, giving him a) a boost in understanding and b) a self pat on the back as an ego booster. Also, it creates a web of allies, which is invaluable to primal man.

    Does this notion of life being a connection of supposedly philanthropic acts all with the intent to benefit oneself in some way cheapen the experience of social life? Maybe for some people it does, but for me I find it makes social life shine all the brighter.

    The next possible, logical truth one derives from the above, that Darwinism applies even more deeply than we thought, is going back to competition instead of camaraderie.

    I imagine you could apply further logic to advance from competition to camaraderie to competition and further again to camaraderie, describing ways in which the function of human self-interest contributes back to the group, resulting in unintentional camaraderie.
    This creates a circle.

    Thus, I would argue, from the circle, that the beginning of the circle is the answer. The beginning of the circle is your entrance into civilization and society. The end of your circle is death.
    You begin in society as a selfish, primal, beastly thing. Some call this thing a toddler.
    If you’re lucky, you end your natural life a wizened, tired, well-lived senior.
    The toddler relies on self-interest functions, and the senior has an understanding of its reliance on others. The truth is, both survive largely because of a strong society, a camaraderie.

    This camaraderie supports the seniors and newborn largely out of self-interest, as a means of perpetuating its existence (its young being this vessel) and its culture and beliefs (the old being an integral part of this). look at that… ANOTHER CIRCLE!

    I don’t have a conclusion for this. It’s food for thought 🙂

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