Thus we are said to be good drivers if we automatically avoid pedestrians while being able to continue our conversation with passengers in the car. Original thoughts become a sentence, which becomes a clich , automatically intoned without reflection. Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. As a remedy to such sleepwalking, Shklovsky proposed art. The purpose of art, he argues, is to make one notice.
Art seeks to defamiliarize and make strange.
I would argue that defamiliarization is not only the aim of art, but of great education as well. Thus, the university environment at first will seem alien. You are entering a period of dislocation, of dis-orientation, if you will. You will, in this volatile time, no doubt reexamine your friendships, your lovers, your home and town. Your roots, in other words.