Or did you think I was too stupid to know what a Eugoogooly was?
Fall Semester: A Postmortem of Sorts.
At this point when I am more than halfway through college I cannot even express in words how quickly the semesters have been passing by. I think that, for one of the first times in my academic career, I experienced the adage, “time flies when you’re having fun.” From picking apart the underappreciated human ability to speak and comprehend speech to determining a player’s best response in a given situation, I was seeing the world in a new light. The world was smaller, but the light was brighter, dissecting these minutias that we so often take for granted. But I also explored another world – the one in literature where characters are reborn and events relived every time we flip open to the first page. I made myself comfortable in the castle of Otranto, I did some digging in the deranged mind of Nathaniel in Hoffmann’s The Sandman, and I encountered what is arguably the most famous dash in world literature. For the duration of each lecture I was enraptured by professors so passionate about their work and so keen on sharing with eager minds. One, who on the first day of class, advised us to go home and check our closet for ghosts. Another, who, in response to my infamous computer crash, met with me individually to present her lectures again. Yet another, who confessed that his only regret in life was that he was going to die without having made a dent in the list of areas he wished to explore.
You may be thinking, “Okay, I get it. You loved your classes.” But that’s just not it. For the first time in college, I did not find myself counting down to the end of the semester. The last week of classes found me dropped-jaw in disbelief. It’s not that I have become comfortable with a routine, but that in the last four months I have become accustomed to individuals who are experts in their field standing in front of me and wowing me for fifty to eighty minutes each time we meet. I am nervous that future courses will be unable to compete.
It would be preposterous for you to infer that I only loved my classes because I did well in them or for me to imply that I did well in all my classes. Let me just say that I was not at all endowed with game theory instinct. But as an inspiring teacher at my high school used to insist, “You are not your grade.” Still, I am going away having learned. I watched on as my seemingly dichotomous areas of focus collided. I gained world knowledge that I can now go on to apply in whatever these next semesters and beyond have in store for me. Something a simple letter grade can never completely convey.
While semesters like this one make me want to remain a student for many years to come, the pursuit of higher education also requires that I one day share my own passions with other eager learners. If I can just once enrapture an individual the way that my professors repeatedly did to me this past semester, I will claim victory.
At this point when I am more than halfway through college I cannot even express in words how quickly the semesters have been passing by. I think that, for one of the first times in my academic career, I experienced the adage, “time flies when you’re having fun.” From picking apart the underappreciated human ability to speak and comprehend speech to determining a player’s best response in a given situation, I was seeing the world in a new light. The world was smaller, but the light was brighter, dissecting these minutias that we so often take for granted. But I also explored another world – the one in literature where characters are reborn and events relived every time we flip open to the first page. I made myself comfortable in the castle of Otranto, I did some digging in the deranged mind of Nathaniel in Hoffmann’s The Sandman, and I encountered what is arguably the most famous dash in world literature. For the duration of each lecture I was enraptured by professors so passionate about their work and so keen on sharing with eager minds. One, who on the first day of class, advised us to go home and check our closet for ghosts. Another, who, in response to my infamous computer crash, met with me individually to present her lectures again. Yet another, who confessed that his only regret in life was that he was going to die without having made a dent in the list of areas he wished to explore.
You may be thinking, “Okay, I get it. You loved your classes.” But that’s just not it. For the first time in college, I did not find myself counting down to the end of the semester. The last week of classes found me dropped-jaw in disbelief. It’s not that I have become comfortable with a routine, but that in the last four months I have become accustomed to individuals who are experts in their field standing in front of me and wowing me for fifty to eighty minutes each time we meet. I am nervous that future courses will be unable to compete.
It would be preposterous for you to infer that I only loved my classes because I did well in them or for me to imply that I did well in all my classes. Let me just say that I was not at all endowed with game theory instinct. But as an inspiring teacher at my high school used to insist, “You are not your grade.” Still, I am going away having learned. I watched on as my seemingly dichotomous areas of focus collided. I gained world knowledge that I can now go on to apply in whatever these next semesters and beyond have in store for me. Something a simple letter grade can never completely convey.
While semesters like this one make me want to remain a student for many years to come, the pursuit of higher education also requires that I one day share my own passions with other eager learners. If I can just once enrapture an individual the way that my professors repeatedly did to me this past semester, I will claim victory.
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