A true academic

What makes someone an academic or a scholar?

What qualifies a distinguished savant?

Is it making the grade? Getting the degree? Publishing the journal?

Getting picked?

Or is it merely the insatiable desire to learn and to grow? And the ability—the tenacity—to make that learning happen?

Outside ivory towers, it’s hard to know what discerns a true academic from an amateur.

But one thing is certain, what's ever driving the internal narrative is what truly counts.