My Reflective Essay
Forbidden Knowledge 2004-2005
The Story of the Bible by Charles Foster, copyright 1873 by Charles Foster. Drawings by F.B. Schell and others.
As a “returning student” I must admit that I was quite reticent about the idea of taking a freshman inquiry class with young and inexperienced kids. My first day of class I was ready to drop (the class, that is)—the other students were even worse than I feared. They proclaimed opinions as though they were facts engraved in stone and used the word ‘like’ as filler more times in one sentence than the entire cast of Valley Girl did in the whole movie combined. I got to hear about how drunk they got last weekend and how their parents were a total drag. I heard about how a few after school babysitting jobs translated into a life time of volunteer work, how ‘poor people were bad parents’ and was called (with the rest of the class in one memorable email) a ‘hippocryte’—I rest my case.
Or so I thought. Then one day I realized that none of that mattered. I was learning more in Forbidden Knowledge that in all my other classes combined—first and foremost how to control my temper and my acidic tongue. Patience, never one of my virtues, was of an essence if I wanted to learn what this class had to offer—one hell of a lot of information—and succeed. I also observed a change, slight as it may have been, in most (if not all) of the aforementioned students—it was a trip (the good kind!) to watch them expand their horizons. I hadn’t realized how much the first year away from home could change a person’s take on the world. Watching that happen was definitely worth the price of admission. After taking the better part of a decade off of school I found a class that taught me not only patience but humility when faced, myself, with all I did not know—things I had not fathomed until this year.
I consider myself a self-motivated learner. When deciding to start college again, and full time at that, I decided to prove to myself that I could be a straight A student for the first time in my life, whether the class was fun or challenging or not. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do anything this school had to offer and work full time to boot. This was harder than I ever would have imagined, and easier as well. The hard part for me has always been self-discipline—I could never make myself care enough to do the work if I could find something better to do and believe me when I say just about anything is more entertaining than algebra! It didn’t get easy until I made myself get into the habit of doing everything and on time every time. I had to get it through my head that if I had time to curl up and reread The World According To Garp, I had plenty of time to write that seemingly pointless journal entry.
Freshman Inquiry helped me with my challenges by being structured enough to force me to get into the habit of homework while allowing me the room to ease into the role of student again. It was the best possible type of class for me, as the reading was challenging and the writing was incredibly simple as I had already had the background in it—it acted as a good review. If the reading had been less challenging, I would have lost interest and if the writing assignments more frequent I would have become either bored, or would have ignored them in favor of work. This helped me strike a happy medium, not just in this class, but in all my classes—it got me into a rhythm and allowed me to find out what worked for me as far as the rhythm of school life was concerned.
Intellectually, I have improved as a scholar by leaps and bounds. I was exposed not just to new ideas, but to ideologies that I either hadn’t understood completely or hadn’t thought about but merely accepted as par for the course in life. I was forced to examine my own beliefs in light of these illuminated facts and was able to then make more informed decisions. This was especially helpful in light of the elections for President of the United State early this school year. Through writing assignments and class discussions I was prodded into looking at each of the candidates a bit closer than I might have otherwise.
Another area in which this class has helped me immensely is that of analytical writing. In other classes I had written many a research paper and many an opinion essay, but had never been taught to analyze in my writing. This proved to be a watershed moment for me this year—the light bulb lit; you could read ‘Eureka!’ in a little thought bubble above my head—the whole bit. It’s really wonderful when you have those moments, as they are so few and far between…
I am glad that my ‘resistance was futile’—that I was required to take this class. The subjects covered in this class were so broad that they crossed into just about every class that I took this year (especially in my major, Sociology), helping me to better understand what in the heck I was or should have been learning in those classes. Thank you, Phil, for the opportunity to work with the material and to learn some of the things they should have taught us in high school, but didn’t. The reading list was amazing (although I will always think of Johnson as the best, if not the most pretentious, sleeping pill in the world) and I gleaned much of what I didn’t understand in the text through your lectures and through our group discussions. I am now an advocate of the University Studies Program, and some day hope to participate as a mentor. Thank you for the great year!