Hope without optimism: On becoming a student at university again

"One can have hope without feeling that things in general are likely to turn out well." - Terry Eagleton

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(not my photo; found on pinterest!)

It is often the case that, during difficult moments in my life, I find myself having to write for myself the words of comfort I wish I could hear from someone else. This essay is, in a way, exactly that: something I wish I were reading right now, written by a third party. But it is also a defense—and perhaps even an ode—to the importance of education and the value of universities.

Three weeks from now, I will begin my second undergraduate degree, this time in English Literature, and I am excited, yes, but also somewhat anxious and uncertain. As you might imagine, this program aligns entirely with my academic and artistic interests, but committing to the decision to begin a new professional and academic journey while so many people my age around me are already more established in their own paths is something that is difficult to come to terms with.

I graduated from law school in 2024 already knowing that I would not pursue a legal career. I entered law school completely deluded about a dozen things. First and foremost (and this says a great deal about my personality), I idealized law school—which, in the city where I live, is the oldest and one of the best in Brazil—as an academic Eden, a cosmopolitan Agora, where I would be intoxicated every day by the freshness of intellectually stimulating discussions and philosophical debates. Imagine my bewildered dismay upon discovering that law school is nothing more than the memorization of procedural bureaucracies (which never made any sense to me) and the study of systems that exist only in the world of what ought to be, and that neither truly exists in practice. I learned that I hated the kind of person who “loved” law, and there wasn’t anyone in the field—neither professors nor my various bosses—whom I admired. Everyone I admired, and everyone whose life I wanted to emulate, was involved with literature and the arts.

But it took me a long time to realize that—or perhaps to accept it. There were many years of reflection and endless chats with my friends. I genuinely tried, in every way I could, to find something I enjoyed within the legal profession, but each new attempt only brought me more frustration and despair, because the thought, “What am I going to do with my life if I hate law?” became ever more recurrent.

I only came to understand with certainty that this path was not for me when I had one year left before graduating (in Brazil, law school is a five-year program), and by that point I had decided that I wasn’t going to quit when I was so close to earning my degree. I had already spent so much blood, sweat, and tears on that school that I wasn’t about to walk away empty-handed.

So I graduated, and now that I knew I truly wanted to work with literature—ideally as a university professor—I was faced with a daunting option: returning to university and starting all over again. I cried a great deal thinking about how much of a “step backward” this would be, and it is by no means easy to make that decision while watching all your friends and classmates move forward with their careers, finally becoming “real” adults, achieving some degree of financial independence, while I had to go back to the classroom and become an intern again. You can imagine all the fears that arise from the social pressure (and often internal pressure as well) to “be someone” as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, I am naturally very determined and, if I may say so, deeply dedicated. If I decided to pursue another degree, then it would have to be the best undergraduate experience possible; I have to make the most of every resource the university has to offer and, above all, I owe it to myself to make the most of the opportunity to finally study professionally something that I not only love but also happen to be very good at. This may sound a little corny or silly, but I love learning; at the end of the day, it is essentially my hobby. I have many passions, and I throw myself into them with all the curiosity in the world, and I genuinely believe that this is my defense against the jaded academics who may say that I’m crazy and that this decision is doomed.

The wonderful thing about having already completed one undergraduate degree is that, this time, I know exactly what I’m getting myself into. I am no longer expecting to find an Academic Eden there, only a way to formalize and lend credibility to what I have already been doing independently and out of sheer passion for the past six years.

Let me explain: six years ago, I began studying literature on my own in a serious and systematic way alongside law school. I designed courses for myself and took courses taught by other people; I assigned myself homework; I read the syllabi of courses from major universities, and I created this newsletter to share my literary analyses, which are the result of all that study. Now I feel immense confidence as well as gratitude toward my past self for having started, for never having stopped, and for having built such an extensive body of knowledge before even setting foot in a literature classroom. It is important for me to say this because I rarely celebrate my own achievements—I finish one thing and immediately move on to the next. So I am sharing this with you in the hope that, who knows, it might inspire someone else to do the same.

But there is more. Some of you may think that my decision to return to university is financially irresponsible, but that is not the case. The thing that fills me with the greatest pride about being Brazilian is that the country’s best universities are the Federal Universities, which, as the name suggests, are funded by the government and entirely free of charge. Although government investment in universities and academic research remains sadly insufficient—especially in the humanities—the mere fact that this system exists, and that thousands of people can decide at any moment to study and change the course of their lives without accumulating thousands of dollars in debt, is extraordinary. I do not believe in private education, and in an ideal society, institutional education at every level—from the most basic to the most advanced—would be entirely free.

As possible as it is to study independently with the endless resources available on the internet, nothing compares to having in-person access to an academic community, the support of an institution, and the guidance of a professor. Though many people seem to have forgotten it, universities are indispensable centers of knowledge, because every important piece of research and every renewal of knowledge takes place through students and professors. The world’s knowledge and information remain in this continuous process of discovery and rediscovery only because someone is being supported by a university to carry it forward.

At a time when misinformation and the manipulation of facts are so widespread, the university stands as one of the last remaining voices of trustworthy knowledge. Of course, educational systems are obsolete in many respects, and major reform is necessary (not in the sense of the British political party), but even so, I do not believe the solution is to abandon formal education or discredit universities for supposedly spreading “ideology,” as many ignorants proclaim. I remain hopeful that the solution to many of our current problems lies in the refinement—not the mechanization—of learning.

My ultimate career goal is to become a professor at a public university and teach until the day I die. And before anyone accuses me of being romantic—which I certainly am, though not in this pejorative sense—I am fully aware of the realities of this profession: my father taught journalism at a Federal University for twenty-five years, and my mother is finishing her Ph.D. in linguistics. We are, ultimately, a family of nerds. As much as I recognize all the difficulties, I would rather devote myself to something I love and believe in deeply than to, perhaps, “get rich” as a lawyer, working 12 hours a day on something that depresses me for people of questionable morals.

by Félix Vallotton

I wouldn’t say that I am pessimistic, aside from the anxious voices of my mind that occasionally yell at me. Even though I can already see on the horizon all the harm that new technologies—especially artificial intelligence—may bring to the academic world (if they haven’t already), I don’t feel discouraged from pursuing a career in academia. In fact, I have an almost arrogant desire to prove that the fatalism permeating universities is mistaken. Once again, I am not romanticizing the situation, but I am not going to sit back and let robots steal my job and pathetic bureaucrats or tech-blinded people destroy everything I hold most dear. I know when it is time to give up, but I think it is worth trying first before believing those who claim to have heard the trumpets of the apocalypse (and besides, things are not as bad in Brazil as they are in the US, thank goodness).

Perhaps I will discover that being a professional academic is not for me either, and that’s perfectly fine. I will find out by doing it. And that is, in a way, the “lesson” I would like you to take away from this essay (and me too—remember, I am writing this for myself as well): as unfair and exhausting as it may be, life is nothing more than a constant recalculating of routes, especially if you are someone driven by strong desires, as I am. Life is far too short for me not to do what I want (within reason, of course. After all, what I would really like right now is to be enjoying the eurosummer).

At this moment, this choice is the one that makes the most sense to me. I don’t consider myself a great idealist, nor someone devoted to grand causes, but simply, as Terry Eagleton puts it, someone endowed with “hope without optimism.” Running the risk of sounding contrived, there are two things that genuinely move me politically: workers’ rights and access to education. This newsletter is, I hope, one avenue of access to education through the very best I am able to offer right now. I want people to read and learn something new because of me. It’s good for the ego and good for society—see what a wonderful combo.

I don’t know whether this plan of mine will work out; all I can do is hope that it will, while doing everything within my power to make it happen. People say that today’s world conspires against scholars in the humanities, but, as far as I am concerned, it has always been that way. When has a poet ever been considered more useful to society than a physicist? Only before physics was invented, when poetry already happened to exist.

Ever since then, the poet’s market value—and worse still, the market value of those who study poets—has only continued to decline. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s all right. I have no interest in measuring myself according to utilitarian, technocratic, or neoliberal standards. In a way, it makes sense that humanists should find themselves on the “losing” side of the world, since the system governing this world (as always, everything comes back to capitalism) is fundamentally incompatible with the values promoted by the humanities. It would be far stranger if, within such a system, humanists were flourishing. My wish—and this one is genuinely romantic—is simply for a little less hostility, because anything beyond that feels far too optimistic.

I’ll still be here once school starts, perhaps posting a little less frequently, but hopefully sharing with you what I’m learning at university and the projects I’ll be working on.