• waking up and being genuinely thrilled to go to class because today is THAT CLASS you love so much you’d like it to never end
• coffee breaks with friends, chatting and joking about this particularly hard essay and the prof’s mannerism
• coffee breaks on your own, as you absent-mindedly watch the people around you, while thinking about what you’re working on
• finding this book you’ve been dying to read for so long, and borrowing it from the library
• the feeling of excitement that goes through you whenever you remember The Book is in your backpack
• understanding everything during demanding classes and being genuinely interested in the subject
• buying a New Special Pen and taking colorful notes that look super pretty
• not being able to shut up about your school projects (no your friends dont really care about the intricate details of what you’re working on, they don’t even have the same major as you, but they’re happy to hear you rant with such a burning passion)
• actually doing the extra reading and having your curiosity so piqued by what you’re reading that you go on and on and suddenly its 1am and what happened
• printing the project you’ve spent so much time and energy on and feeling the paper’s warmth
• actually submitting that project without feeling awful about it because you know you did your best and aren’t responsible for what happens next
• when you finally finish this Super Hard And Important Essay at like 3am, open the window and feel the cold night air on your burning cheeks and everything is dark and quiet and you can see the moon and you’re at peace with everything for a few minutes
• when this professor you admire says you did a great job and/or that you’re talented!!!!
• realizing two concepts that seemed so far away from each other and that you discovered in wildly different contexts are actually interlinked, then Realizing™ things and linking concepts/works/articles to each other at the speed of light & being super excited about it
• being so deeply immersed in your work that you didn’t realize two hours have passed
• finding the Perfect Spot at the library
• that Pure Joy moment when you FINALLY understand that super obscure sentence/text
• when you feel anxious because you’re not done with your homework & the deadline is super tight & your friend tells you they aren’t done yet either
• same but with an even more intense relief feeling when you realize you both haven’t even started yet
• when the professor starts a new reasoning and you can predict what the next idea/the final conclusion will be
• when the professor mention your favorite novel/author/fictional character in class and you feel like your internal screech of joy could shatter glass
• the Academic Salt™ that has you like 👀👀
• when the professor tears apart an author or scholar you hate and you’re like YES I WANT BLOOD GIVE ME BLOOD
• when you learn that Cool New Fact that makes you reconsider your whole life
• leaving the library after a long productive day and feeling like nothing is real but experiencing everything more intensely
• leaving the library at night after a long study session and everybody has left already and its just you and the long neon-lit corridors then stepping outside and smelling the crisp night wind

• when you learned a thing that interessted you and two days later someone completly unrelated to your work will say “hey i wonder how this works?” and you’re so excited to explain it because you KNOW THAT
• when you’re anxious af for a class and the professor is actually super friendly and you feel confident enough to ask questions
• and suddently thank to this one professor EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE
• understanding that One Difficult Point and suddently you feel like you UNDERSTAND THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE
• sometimes you can feel like you have too much in your bag but then one friend has a problem and they are pleasently surprised when you have Just The Right Thing
• Running half the campus because you’re so excited to see your friend and to eat with them !!!!!!!!

“If by intellectual you mean somebody who works only with his head and not with his hands, then the bank clerk is an intellectual and Michelangelo is not. And today, with a computer, everybody is an intellectual. So I don’t think it has anything to do with someone’s profession or with someone’s social class. According to me, an intellectual is anyone who is creatively producing new knowledge. A peasant who understands that a new kind of graft can produce a new species of apples has at that moment produced an intellectual activity. Whereas the professor of philosophy who all his life repeats the same lecture on Heidegger doesn’t amount to an intellectual. Critical creativity—criticizing what we are doing or inventing better ways of doing it—is the only mark of the intellectual function.”