And then it hit me.....

By "it" in the blog title, I mean, of course, the huge commercial box truck who decided I wasn't scooting it off the highway off ramp quickly enough. I, personally, prefer to use the "toot my horn twice quickly and wave while probably (I'll admit it) cursing under my breath" tactic, but this guy chose plan B.

I'm OK, and my poor battered car will get fixed, but it means I'm sore and achy and not in the mood to blog. Thank goodness I have not one but two JD Robb books (1 book and one novella) to cuddle up with while my neck loosens. I did find something I posted on a forum on Facebook that I thought was interesting. This was from the Open Minds forum, started by a really cool colleague of mine (from graduate school and a year of teaching at CU).

The topic was begun by a student bemoaning all the "unessential" classes that make up his core curriculum. Not something to say in front of a Wakie.

Allow me to pop my head in here even though I'm not a former student of Cathy's, but a colleague. I teach at a school which seems to have adopted the first poster's thoughts -- every class should directly affect the student's career path. This works great for some people -- if you had asked my sister what her career path was at age 4, she could have told you. She wanted to be a veterinarian then, she is a veterinarian now, and she couldn't be happier. The vast majority of us, however, are far from that determined at age 17 or 18 when we enter college. I went to a school where students did not declare their majors until junior year although most blended core classes and upper levels as soon as they leaned towards a major -- especially English majors not wanting to be saddled with 5 upper level writing courses in one semester, and I'm thankful for that delayed declaration system as I flopped around departments through much of my freshman year and had a blast doing it.

As for the "pointless" nature of some classes: nothing you take in college is pointless because truly smart people are the ones who learn to absorb information and then apply what they have learned to every part of their lives. As your eighth grade teacher told you that you would use algebra later (and you do), there is something valuable in knowledge itself. I won't speak to every department, but you take British literature to learn some incredibly important things that your 18 years on the planet might not have revealed (because no one knows at 18 -- definitely me included).

Good authors build their works as intricately as an architect plans a structure. Simply put, literature keeps your ego in check. Turn on the television in America today, and within five minutes the uneducated feel that the problems we face today are unique, brand new, and utterly destructive (and usually caused by one person or group and that person or group alone). A scholar of British literature need only read Shakespeare to realize that hundreds of years ago, people were pretty much as they are today -- often kind but sometimes truly diabolical. People have hurt each other throughout time, and somehow the human race survives.

All people begin in middle age to face their own mortality -- their fears of facing old age in the current climate of upheaval. The scholar of ancient literature, however, remembers that Odysseus faced almost identical perils (he thinks: "I spent much of my life working in battle for my descendants and what do I have to show for it -- how will Telemachus and Penelope survive if I am not there to protect and provide for them?").

So, literature shows you that you are not unique. It serves to show the patterns of humanity. It can comfort you by showing you that you are not alone but rather the latest incarnation of a journey billions have taken, and survived. There are other benefits of literature (you get to try out your interpretation skills and see how people throughout written history have dealt with situations to their benefit or peril), but the whole interconnectedness is my area of study.