But as the rabbit opened the door, the suspicious owl looked through the crack, and what he saw was a huge bear, standing on his hind legs ready to pounce. But even the most powerful adviser will not be able to sustain you for many years beyond the thesis. John Dewey, a man who provoked controversy as an educator, but remains one of the wisest thinkers of our times, published a book called School and Society, which first appeared in 1900. We should not be able to live very long in any one taken by itself. We live in a world where all sides are bound together.
All studies grow out of relations in the one great common world.
In a sense, you have come from stratified worlds at the University. If, for example, your discipline was mathematics, you have taken linear equations, differential equations, possibly partial differential equations, algebra, and probability. Each of these has been presented as a single, detached discipline. Yet there are clear signs that the jobs of the future will require increasingly integrated knowledge. As you leave the University, you will have to learn beyond the borders of your discipline.