I’m a huge fan of Wikipedia, I’ve spent (wasted? well, at least I was learning…) many an evening down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, clicking link after link, becoming engrossed in some topic of interesting to me and trying to learn everything there possibly is to learn about it, getting sidetrack by some unexpected interesting tangent that pops up in an article about something familiar and following it for a time before returning to my thread of original interest.  None of this would have really been possible in the same way before Wikipedia; there was an Encyclopedia in my house growing up, but turning page after page and even going between multiple volumes in my quest for knowledge would have taken all of the fun out of trying to learn in this free-form way. That’s the thing about Wikipedia: because it’s so easy to use, it’s actually really fun for any curious person with academic interests. I’d definitely agree that Wikipedia is a perfectly acceptable academic tool, largely because of its user-friendliness: it’s very easy to get a broad base of knowledge for use in organizing a paper in almost any subject. The fault would be treating it as one’s only source, as many Wikipedia articles don’t go into the necessary depth to support an academic thesis. However, another thing Wikipedia is usually very good about, especially when it comes to it articles in more academic areas, is citing its sources. The sources a wikipedia article cites are often perfectly good academic sources worth citing in any paper. Besides which, using ANY one source as the sole one in any paper would be a mistake in the first place, even it was from a well-respected textbook or scholarly journal.

Ok, so that’s all well and good, but the other thing from this weeks’ classes that’s sticking in my craw is the discussion we had about whether it’s good to wear suits when out in public, such as in class.  Prof. O’Malley put forth that showing the discipline to wear a suit reflects the discipline to focus on learning, but I’d argue that it merely reflects the discipline to wear a suit and nothing more. I only own one suit, and I didn’t even bring it to school with me from Los Angeles, does that mean that I’m not willing to really focus on learning? Shouldn’t the definition of what it means to have a public persona evolve with the times? Why should being a public person mean the same thing to me as it did to my grandparents and their grandparents?

I’m not sure I have really good answers to any of these questions I’m raising, and I’m not even sure whether I’m raising these questions solely to subconsciously give myself an academic-minded justification for my personal distaste for suits and shaving and cutting my hair and all that jazz. Nonetheless, I’d have appreciated it if Prof. O’Malley had done more than act as a devil’s advocate for the pro-suit side. At any rate, even if some aspects of that discussion bothered me, I’m glad we had it; I don’t think I’d ever had a reason why I don’t like wearing suits before besides “I don’t like suits”. I like it when I’m stimulated to question my positions, as I may be persuaded to change them, and even if I’m not, as was the case this time, it often leads me to a better understanding of my own beliefs. That intellectually challenging aspect is maybe my favorite part of this class.