Sometimes not so common

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without
education than to have education without common sense.
-Robert Green Ingersoll


I can vouch for the veracity of this statement.  Having spent most of my adult life on college and university campuses, I've witnessed many, many people who have tons of education and very little common sense.  They're perplexed by many of the simple things in life, such as how to relate to the people around them, and focused almost exclusively on their disciplines, their research, and the papers that they're writing that they know very few people will read.  It's really kind of ironic that people with lots of education can write a 100-page dissertation or research paper, but can't fix the faucet in their kitchen sink when it needs to be changed, or get completely flustered when their car won't start in the morning and they have to find a different way to get to work.

I value common sense much more than I value my Ph.D.  The doctorate took a lot of time and effort, but the common sense helps me much more in my daily life and my relationships with other people.  Common sense has proved to be extremely important to me when I've faced certain obstacles, and it helps me a lot when I'm working with young people and looking for ways to get through to them.  It helps me decide how to create and use classroom assignments, and it helps me to come up with unique dinners when there's nothing in the cupboards that I really want to eat.

Work on your common sense, and you'll be working on a richer life.  Work on your education, and that's still extremely valuable.  The trick is not to give up common sense for book sense, for having the latter without the former is like wearing a raincoat every single day--even when it's not raining.