I
decided to come to BU in the fifth grade when I took a trip to Boston
and fell in love with the city. I don't even think Google was around
back then, but I know when I got home from that trip I did an AOL search
or whatever I used at the time and looked at the BU website. It was
pretty much in my head from that point that BU was going to be where I
went to college. By the time I finished high school I was conscious of
the advice of counselors and others and considered a bunch of schools.
Ultimately, I only applied to BU and the University of Rochester (which
I can't even imagine having gone to). I wanted to come to Boston
because I loved the city, I was following the Red Sox religiously, and I
was excited about taking courses in the Core Curriculum, since I thought it might give me the kind of education that I felt I was missing in my high school.
When I came for Orientation, I remember one of the deans
giving us a short pep talk in which he said we had come there to build
the minds that we would live in for the rest of our lives. My memory often
fails me, particularly with quotes, but that one stands out brilliantly
clearly in my mind. Studying in the Core Curriculum for two years felt like a
continuation of that project that the dean charged us with. My first humanities professor
was a friendly yet wacky man and I learned some interesting things in his class,
particularly about religion. But in my sophomore year, I took an honors
class with a professor who really inspired me and the experience was amazing since it was an opportunity to learn from and interact with a truly brilliant person. Much of what I learned
in that class really did change my brain and my mind forever.
But that only accounts for four classes that I took out of
32 or so. Four of those classes without a doubt helped build the
mind that I wanted to live in for the rest of my life. Plus the four or
so classes I took during the study abroad time in Padova. That
experience more than anything was the most intensive learning experience
of my life: meeting new people, learning a language and culture,
traveling, taking classes in subjects like film and writing that I would
not have tried at BU. That also helped build the mind I wanted to
have.
The rest of my education doesn't feel like it was part of that same project but rather a different parallel goal. I studied econ. and each class felt like it was just
rehashing the same examples and providing a little color and detail to
the picture I got from Intro level classes. In fact, I believe that I've
learned less about economics from BU courses than from following Marginal Revolution and other econ blogs,
which I still check daily. Ironically, I first learned about the blog
from a professor that I had taken a class with. While that deserves recognition, I think the credit is due more to the relative strangers writing their
blogs than it does to the teacher with whom I took two classes.
Today, I'm working as a teacher and this question of
how valuable college was in building the mind that I want to live in
comes up for me because a) I have an effect on my own students and 2) I
have to make a decision on whether to pursue a Master's degree, even when
the Master's program that I started through TFA was a strong reminder
of how so many classes at BU failed to really inspire me or leave me
with some knowledge that I really valued. In the end, I think I'll do
the Master's program but more because it is an important step in a professional career, not
because I don't think I could learn this information elsewhere. I'm
sure there are blogs, sites and books that could teach me how to be
better at my work. In fact, I read many of them already. So the
question now is what to do: just do a degree because it will help me get
ahead or try to carry on the project that the dean charged me with at freshman orientation and keep building the mind that I want to live in. The one
thing I do know about my time at BU, is that it gave me the ability to learn and think for myself.
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