Our lives are complex. It would make sense to assume that educating ourselves about the way this complex world works would make things seem clearer. But as students we often find even our own academic fields impenetrable — due to elaborate, fluffy language and thick texts that leave us wondering if the authors have any life outside of a library.
But often it is simply hard to be straight up in academia. Students are not the only ones struggling with this. Professors also want to reach out to students and readers with their discoveries. They don’t want their valuable knowledge to be lost somewhere in translation. Writing simple, concise words is difficult. It is mentally arduous, can be physically strenuous and can affect one’s carefully developed ability to galvanize the veneration of acquaintances.
Just kidding.
Being precise is hard. Hard is a good word. Hard is hard to say. It requires a little humility.
“Writers are bad … because they want to sound smart,” said Paul Silvia in “How to Write a Lot.” It is a trap all too easy to fall into.
“If the water is dark … the lake must be deep,” Silvia said — an aphorism referring to our assumption that there must be some genius idea behind confusing words, which a regular person cannot quite grasp. But let’s face it: Do any of us really enjoy reading thick, scientific articles that leave us feeling less clever than we thought we were?
Don’t get me wrong, I love words. I love them to a point that I could use many other more eloquent adjectives to express my appreciation of them. But if we want to only appreciate the beauty of words, there are many beautiful words to be found in songs, in poetry or in a thesaurus. In formal education, however, the complexity of ideas words convey is more beneficial.
We do not want our language to become a tool to differentiate and divide people. Jargon can be necessary in certain cases, but when one word can convey an idea to anyone who reads it and another will only be understood by those who already have the same educational background as its writer, the former is much more valuable.
If a graduate student in biochemical engineering wanted to ask a graduate student in fine arts on a date, they should be able to discuss their interests and life goals and not have to stick to conversations about football and the weather.
A university is a powerful setting for a group of capable people to attempt to bridge this gap and find a language in which we can communicate complex ideas and not be linguistically isolated. If academia can continue to search for and produce ways to make their work clear, enjoyable and accessible to the public, we would see a more educated public. We would see professors of biology reading sociology papers with interest and perhaps those two grad students on a second date. We would see students being excited about their class readings, and more students believing that they too can publish their ideas.
“If the water is dark … the lake must be deep,” Silvia said. “… I ought to have said, bodies of water characterized by minimal transparency are likely to possess significantly high values of the depth dimension.”
You choose.