As my love of the liberal arts fermented, it took a greater and greater toll on my career plans. I remember at the end of my freshman year, when I first “considered” graduate school for religion. It was the first time a subject had truly grabbed me, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t act on the idea much, since law school was still front and center, but as I meditated on majoring in religion, further schooling was in the back of my mind.
Sophomore year, law school fought back, as I became enamored with Constitutional Law. But at the same time, my attachment to my professors grew. We want to be like those we admire, and I’ve had no shortages of admirable teachers. Breadth of knowledge, writing and research style, ability to weave ideas seamlessly together in lectures–all seemed like the traits I wanted to have as an adult. As I got more experienced with classes, I began to develop a strong ideology about what my ideal class structure. Part of my graduate school ”plan” was to really impress students with proper writing and studying skills.
As a junior, my love of the humanities increased. I spent more time with a single body of literature than I ever had, in the guise of Dr. Rocha’s “book club” about St. Augustine’s Confessions. I started to fear I wouldn’t be able to live a “life of the mind,” which we often associate with the liberal arts, if I didn’t go to grad school and become a professor. In Rome, I became a Classics major when I realizes its gigantic, irreplaceable importance to the Western humanities. This was the year I became more interested in curriculum–the lessons from C&T of my sophomore year sprung up, as I realized the comparative importance of certain subjects. I find many subjects interesting, but some are more fundamental to the liberal arts than others. Many books are great, but some lay more ground upon which to grow. This was when I pondered the the “Great Books” program, which I had dismissed as a high-school student, but now wished was a greater influence at Wabash.
