“Do you think it matters, Daniyal? Do you think anybody cares about your senior project? All that matters is the people around you, and your senior project doesn’t make a difference to anyone.”

All I could do was to look at my friend with a blank expression, completely stunned and humbled. These words weren’t spoken with the least bit of aggression, as one might think. Rather, they were delivered with a straight, honest face and in a soft-spoken manner, and still managed to convey all the seriousness in the world. The words struck me more so for two reasons. Firstly, I consider my undergraduate senior thesis to be the culmination and high-point of a grueling intellectual journey undertaken over five years. Secondly, my project is dedicated to my friends because they have often been my most ardent supporters as well as my harshest critics during this journey. Yet, there she was, a friend mind you, effortlessly reducing my best academic work to a heap of worthless trash!

In retrospect, her attitude towards a piece of academic writing and a person who aspires to be an academic was not surprising at all. Current opinion on the value and worth of the institutional home of the academic — the university — is far from being conclusively positive. My friend had recently experienced and witnessed some of the worst tendencies of academia at a conference at which she presented a paper. Rather than asking a question about the presentation, a philosophy instructor in the audience had chosen to speak to my friend in a patronizing manner, suggesting that her interest in her chosen subject of inquiry was worrisome, thinking that it was unhealthy for a girl of her age.

Thus, understanding the source of her disdain towards my project was not difficult. Academics and university professors aren’t always worthy role-models, to say the least. Many people I’ve spoken to insist that academics don’t really do anything, just talk; and you can bet there’s going to be a lot of self-serving conversation (at academic conferences, for example, not to say that there aren’t constructive conferences). No wonder academics are often . . .

Read more: Academia: Reflections of an Undergraduate Student in Pakistan