Nicholas Holderman/The Falcon

Name-droppers. You've seen them in your classes, panting in the front row, waving their arms at the teacher like they're trying to hail a cab. When they're finally called on, they string together quotes from Tolstoy, Freud, and Aristotle and call it a contribution to the classroom.

Name-droppers are infesting universities across the world. No matter what the dilemma or topic, they are ready to quote an author.

Not all who quote authors are name-droppers. It is the spirit of a name-dropper that separates him or her from a casual quoter. Name-dropping happens in a spirit of bragging and a "you should be impressed at what I've read" attitude. It's an attitude that is not seeking to discover truth, but rather claims to already know the answers -- or more specifically, that a certain author knows the answers.

The problem with name-dropping is that it relies on quoting someone else's ideas rather than creating your own. When you offer a solution by simply quoting someone, you're not really learning or thinking; you're just projectile vomiting out something you've read.

A computer does this -- it takes in typed information, retains it, then spits it back out when called upon. Nothing new has ever come out of a computer system. Nothing new will come out of a name-dropper either.

Our minds are not only storage systems; they are imaginative faculties that have the capacity to expand and improve ideas.

When you name-drop, you're not furthering discussions about ideas, only parroting what has already been said. The world has enough parrots -- what it needs is thinkers and creators.

Bekah Grim is a junior majoring in creative writing

If you pick up a book before thinking about an idea yourself, it is like going to a graveyard to learn how to live. We already have the tools for great ideas within our own minds, yet we run to books to tell us what to think. The authors of books have already had their chances and their thoughts. If we wish to move forward, now it must be our turn to think and create.

Universities are breeding name-droppers. The mission statement of modern education claims to be preparing kids to think for themselves, yet students are constantly assigned reading.

When was the last time you were asked to go home, sit down, and think? When has a professor asked you just to contemplate an idea? We rely too heavily on books, causing us to mistake reading for thinking. We are becoming afraid to think without a book in front of us. This is the mentality that keeps us from using our own minds. It is the reason why we are more concerned about adding length to an assigned paper than adding ideas.

Name-dropping is a product of the fear to use our own minds. It is the act of running away from our minds to rest in the safety net of someone else's thoughts. If you name-drop, you can never be wrong; Aristotle can be wrong for you.

I'm not saying that we should abandon books completely. Books can surely act as a catalyst to our own ideas. Reading exercises the mental process that can put us on the path toward original thought, but we must not rest there.

Books and authors can give us the bricks to build our own ideas, but the house we assemble using them must be our own.

Our minds contain original faculties of reason and imagination that can further the world only if we quit name-dropping and use them. We should keep reading, not as a substitute for thinking, but as a way to fuel our mind and imagination. Our minds are like cars -- we should fill them with the fuel of books, but it is up to us to drive them somewhere new.