SuperStudent

What is the SuperStudent [TM Copyright Sometime Next Year DO_NOT_USE_THIS_PHRASE_FOR_PROFIT no.animals.were.harmed.during.the.making.of] ?

The SuperStudent is a self-styled permanent or majority-of-time permanent student. (S)He may or may not go on to graduate level formal study. However, his/her own research and education efforts continue throughout his/her life in a less formal way. The SuperStudent recognizes learning for it's own sake. Continuing to learn means a majority of mental effort is going towards unprofitable (in the monetary sense) pursuits so therefore the SuperStudent has to either:

A) Subsist on lowered income, perhaps as a result of inevitable periods of non-work and/or low-paying low-skill low-stress employment, or

B) Have a constant cash flow from skillful manipulation of a starter bank of funds, either through family/inheritance/legacy or from an early career of saving and scrimping/selling the soul to "The Man."

The majority of SuperStudents lower the national average of consumerism, simply because more brain power/energy/life force/chi is going towards intellectual pursuits and less is available for more traditional "American" consumerist activities. This is sometimes thought of as a drain on the system/Unamerican, but in this humble writer's opinion it merely brings the average of expenditure towards a more reasonable amount. In most cases the SuperStudent's ratio of income:expenditure does not differ significantly from the national average/ratio that supports a healthy capitalist society because the quantities of figures on either side of the ratio have been lowered, preserving a healthy ~ 1:1 ratio.

The majority of SuperStudents also stop being SuperStudents for brief periods of their lives, usually for emotional enrichment. This is sometimes called a "breakdown" and is often brought on by the ordinary varieties of human tragedy such as: Divorce, death, philosophical/religious slip, environmental catastrophe, etc. There is nothing shameful about this unstable state, the trick is to remember that it IS unstable and without continual significant influx of energy/angst/further worsening of events, the state will soon dissolve and SuperStudent status will once again be granted.

SuperStudent daily study can be maintained through several methods. The smart SuperStudent realizes that self-growth can be brought on not only via the traditional method of reading books on a table/desk/computer but also through physical activity, new life experiences, and still contemplation. Low energy physical activity such as walking is especially useful, for it maintains a certain activity and energy level of the mind that sitting tends to stamp out. Bursts of higher energy activity can be useful for evening out the lower levels brought on by extensive sitting. The SuperStudent does not fight the urge to nap but does what (s)he can to maintain an alert state when not napping. Spending the majority of the time in extreme levels of (non)alertness, rather than in the dazed in-between level so often seen in the modern day worker, is a major benefit of the SuperStudent lifestyle.

It is (in this writer's opinion) unfortunate that the SuperStudent lifestyle is not demonstrated as a viable "career" choice to children. Many proponents of the lifestyle believe the societal benefit of having a large ever-ready supply of thinkers is grossly underestimated because there are few/subtle short-term benefits. It is well known that humans tend to underestimate actions with small short-term but plentiful long-term benefits, for obvious reasons. It is my hope that as current environmental circumstances worsen exponentially, creating greater and greater short AND long term consequences for society, the virtues of slow thought and permanent student status will once again be valued as the life-enhancing gems they are.