In a blanket made of wood and moss, I lay watching the stars with freezing toes and more dirt raveling on my head than hair.
I only have 26 more credits to fill, six being for my major, I thought as bugs and dirt crawled over me. I intended to take Fitness Walking for my Physical Education (P.E.) credit. However, I found myself in a pickle as my other classes conflicted with all the P.E. courses except the Basic Outdoor Skills class. So now, here I am, having a sleepover with the owl’s coos and coyote’s howls on a school night. But I don’t regret a thing.
In 2021, freshman me would stare at the mockingly unchecked sheet of foundation courses. So, I perfectly planned out what to tackle each semester to ensure I would get them done as soon as I could, trying to lift the burdens of the unwanted required classes. My strategy was to get in and get out, taking only what I needed to so I could enjoy smooth sailing and maybe even graduate early.
I plopped in the classes I desperately wanted to slice and dice out of the way and prepared myself to take a trip to Snoozeville. But as I sat in class and watched the board being drawn on, my ears unintentionally perked up; I became invested in the topics and, in fact, started to enjoy the classes I was fighting against. After my first semester, I was obsessed with literally anything and everything I could invest myself in. I took Spanish and audited French for two semesters; I picked up a sitcom writing course and a fiction one as well. I discovered my love for philosophy and have almost accumulated enough credits for a minor in it. I changed my major 11 times to match my ever growing interest changes. Admittedly, I have taken on 18 credits during some semesters just because there were so many courses I wanted to take.
In a New York Times article titled, “Colleges Should Be More Than Just Vocational Schools,” author Dr. Bret C. Devereaux states, “Higher education, with broad study in the liberal arts, is meant to create not merely good workers but also good citizens. Citizens with knowledge of their history and culture are better equipped to lead and participate in a democratic society; learning in many different forms of knowledge teaches the humility necessary to accept other points of view in a pluralistic and increasingly globalized society” (2023).
Though all this is very fine and dandy, there are still downsides for many in a Liberal Arts education setting. I think of my friends in majors much heavier than mine, or the subjects that are just so unbearable for some of us that even with the love of learning, the adoration for it just cannot be found, yet the course still must be taken. So, how can we tackle this?
Unfortunately I’m not an expert, but what I can say is this: try to find friends or acquaintances in the same boat as you and take courses with them. When that isn’t possible, take it as an opportunity to meet new people so you can help each other. I remember having to take mathematics (which was a constant battle as I am not gifted in that subject to say the least). If I hadn’t taken that course at that time, I wouldn’t have met one of my good friends.
My time as a university student is almost up, which is a daunting reality check, especially since I was so adamantly longing to leave as soon as I could. Yet now I have collapsed into the enemies to lovers trope and have fallen in love with the romance of liberal arts and the notion that education is more than just the major I intend on pursuing, but also the ideas that I haven’t got a clue about that are waiting to be studied. So, I can guarantee you, those 26 more credits I have left will not go to waste.