Carleton, UChicago, Washu

Impero
Thu, 09 May 2013 21:20:14 +0000

@1190 Yeah, life is more about intellect, but on the other hand the OP did mention that having a “liberal arts” experience is a part of his consideration too, and what I tried to say was it doesn’t really matter. As far as getting a liberal arts education goes, Carleton is not, as he put it, “his obvious choice” because UChicago offers a comparable, if not (in my experience) superior liberal arts education. Don’t get me wrong, Carleton classes are great and out of my six terms here I only have cause to complain about one. Most of them are so good I honestly can’t pick favorites.

My main complaint is that it is very EASY to get out of parts of liberal arts you might not necessarily like because distribution requirements have a tendency of being vague and broadly applicable. Also the college doesn’t seem to believe that there are some things everyone should know. So for instance they got rid of the required English 1,2,3 for the English department and instead you have a pretty free choice of what (highly specialized) English classes to take, if you were an English major. So you can easily graduate without reading some of the classic literature WRITTEN IN ENGLISH (Dickens, Austen, Steinbeck, etc.), forgetting all the great classics written in other languages for a moment.

There are very few general survey courses (I’m taking one right now and it’s an immersive, unbelievable experience. You feel like you’re seeing the whole picture. From the beginning of a genre to its developmental climax). I came into college wanting to meet the greatest minds in human civilization only to find them spread out into multiple classes that I can’t possibly all take (again, Carleton courses tend to be pretty specialized). The distribution requirements enable a very “skim the surface” approach. People often talk about how diverse their courses have been, but sometimes I wonder how much they actually remember from those courses because they might not take that department again- knowledge only reinforces itself the more you encounter it. I’m a college student. There are important ideas I SHOULD be exposed to, but might not know their worth to start out. Maybe I don’t even WANT to be exposed to them. Maybe I will choose the easy way out. My favorite teacher in high school made us read many texts we didn’t find initially appealing and in the end our lives were changed.

Maybe my greatest issue is simply that Carleton doesn’t think it knows more than I do about what I should know. And that’s what I feel is missing. Guidance. And that’s what I think Chicago’s Core does very well even if it may seem overbearing or pompous. I didn’t come in knowing everything- I’m only 20.