A Fifth Year

I'm not used to eight months without classes. Academically, this time of independent study has been to my soul like water to my body. I must admit that I had grown quite tired of taking a lot of classes I did not want, just because they were there. Looking back at my PHC career, I find it remarkable that I have earned an A or an A- in every class that I would have chosen voluntarily to take. Then there is a jump, and I have Bs or B-minuses in the rest. (Well no, I can't cop out this way. I can think of at least three or four classes that I wanted very much to take and learn and yet nevertheless ended up as Bs. And I still don't have that many Bs in proportion to the rest, so there aren't many leftover to which to apply this sweeping generalization.) It's not that I didn't work hard in the classes I didn't want. I did. It's just that my brain refuses to remember when it doesn't see the point of the information.

I despise college life for the same reason. It is nothing like real life. A bunch of people of approximately the same age cram into similar rooms, follow artificial community standards, and form terrible sleeping habits. There is no privacy or solitude available in one's erstwhile "home." Then there are tests. For some classes they serve a purpose by forcing one to sort disconnected data into rememberable categories. But in Lit classes, for example, they are beyond frustrating! Dr. H. has to test us now, and he doesn't even want to. He himself knows how hard and pointless it is to try to remember all the little details of a book.

(I am editing, but I will leave this part because it's true. The taming hurts, even if it has been incredibly wonderful for me in many ways.) My greatest pain at PHC is being continually reined in. I was passionate and intense about so many things before PHC. Yet everyone keeps wanting to tame me. I naturally incline to humorous, off-the-wall stories, but I was informed by upperclass Lit majors that they were not art. They would not publish humor in their literary journal. Somewhere along the line I lost a great deal of my imagination. I feel its loss, and it saddens me.
I was very competitive before PHC, and I had gotten quite good at TKD. When I came to PHC and started playing Frisbee, I found that guys wouldn't pass to me. In fact, they didn't seem to think I was allowed to compete. Slowly, through much frustration, I adopted a particular form of playing. If I quietly played a defensive game and pretended I didn't want the frisbee after all, I wouldn't be hurt when nobody threw to me. But this is wrong! I am trying to play Frisbee with the St. Louis league, and these passive habits keep cropping up. I have the fire inside, but I am afraid to let it out any more. This hurts! (And I'm pretty sure this part isn't good.)
I used to be passionate about literature. I love it; I feel it; it is to me a special sort of music. I understand it. But there is absolutely no incentive in PHC's lit classes to do all the reading and try to understand the works at hand. If you read deeply and see dozens of things, nobody else wants to talk about them in class. On any given day, only a third of the students will have done the reading in a lit class. All Dr. H. will see is that you are talking a lot and the others aren't. Fairly soon, he will make you stop. Then everyone else invents comments. Or even more likely, the entire class will be eager to bypass the unread reading altogether, and everyone will head off on a worldviews tangent. It is like having a student who desperately wants to learn violin, but there is only one teacher in her vicinity. This teacher continually gets distracted from actually teaching the violin in order to explain the beauties of music and where it comes from. Very nice, but does the student learn how to play? Probably not. (On the other hand, I have learned so many things that I would never have thought of on my own. I admire Dr. H. for a great many things.)

So then, what do I have for the Fall? Four classes: Economics for the Citizen, American Lit, Drama & Film, and History of Islam. Besides these, three last credits of Lit DRW and a three-credit directed study of some sort for History. I want to learn Economics because I know a bit about the Austrian school already from ISI and I want to know more. Since I took AP Economics in high school I feel somewhat prepared, even if it was Keynesian economics. Actually, I want to learn the subject matter of all my classes. But I confess that I am wary of the two Dr. H. classes. I expect that I will find them difficult for the reasons above, even if not for the subject matter. (Actually, I am anticipating them as a chance to learn more than mere scholastics. Why should I fear them because they will be difficult for me?) :)

I will be rooming randomly my fifth year. I would like to have a single-person room, but that probably won't happen.

I would like to detach from PHC life in general, but I have a feeling that I ought to get involved. I can't not be involved. I am deeply interested in the Honor Code, for example. It needs an enforcement mechanism that is simple and elegant. Also, the student gov't website needs improvement. Besides this, who knows how many unforeseen events will arise from a healing college? I need to get back into Student Senate.

I feel like I've moved on already to job, church, and personal studies. Now I'm going back into an artificial environment in 2.5 months. But if I have to, at least I will live there with friends.  ¶ 6:47 AM