What school should be about

8.31.08

Though I wanted to write something along the lines of relationship problems or social criticisms, I though I’d jump on the back-to-school bandwagon this week.
My fifth semester at Capital has begun—the second part of my undergraduate journey. The only strange part of this is that I think I’ve just realized what college is supposed to be about. Not parties (too busy to go) or drinking (also too busy), but rather challenging your assumptions.
This is the first semester I haven’t taken primarily classes in my major. Instead, I have a whopping three religion classes. I’ve called Capital’s religion requirement “indoctrination,” among other things that are not printable, but I would like to formally rescind those comments.
I’m not going to say that in week two of the semester I’ve started to understand religion, because I don’t and I probably never will. However, I recently read a Buddhist parable about a woman’s grief making her more susceptible to religious conversion.
Not only is this a text I never would have willingly picked up, it has made me think very hard for the last week about the difficult times I’ve had where I’ve wished I had a religious pillow on which to fall back.
I only took these classes because I hoped they would help me understand literary works within my major better—books that were written with a strong religious context. Now I find myself viewing the world under this lens of grief-to-religion—how much faith is born of a person needing something to get them through the seemingly impossible? And does it matter how faith is born, anyways? That’s what this week has been for me—a line of questions.
My memory holds no warm and fuzzy stories about the “Cap Family” or late night dorm room talks that have changed my life. But now I do have a story about a group of classes that have made me think, if only for a little while, about a subject I’ve held with disdain. That is what a liberal arts school should be about—not reaffirming ignorance but about opening up a line of questioning. It’s certainly not about supplying a set group of answers to closed minds.
College is full of these kinds of opportunities. Capital has been accused of being like high school, and it can be if you let it. It would be very easy to enter a small school like this and have another four years of high school. Or, you can take classes in a subject you know nothing about (for me, religion and China) and make yourself talk to people you don’t know—people who are different from you, look different from you, and have different value systems from you.
Allowing yourself to be molded by new experiences is vital to being a part of a world that is inseparably connected across religious, political, and continental lines. The world we’ll be a part of after graduation will not be welcoming to people who are stuck in a high school senior mindset.