The first two weeks of classes were
an interesting one for me. To start my week I had the wonderful and simple
class known as Organic Chemistry. Just discussing the syllabus for the course
frightened me. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was second guessing my
major of Biology. However, I just shook off the intimidating feeling that
Organic Chemistry radiated and convinced myself that I could tackle this beast.
The next class to suffer through was Ecology. I have never been one to be too
concerned with the environment. Granted I should be cautious and worried about
the environment, but the truth of the matter was that I wasn’t. To add on to
the misery, I had to take a class about the environment and preserving it. I
thought I came to college to simply learn how to be prepared for medical school
and do “doctor” things. I mean high school seemed to be intended to prepare me
for college and college for medical school. For me, it was as if one stage of
my life was intended to prepare me for the next. After finally leaving ecology,
I had a couple hours of break time where I could either nap or just relax
before my Literary and Traditions II class.
When I first arrived to my Literary
and Traditions II class, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I initially
thought that we would analyze works of literature, provide an in depth
analysis, and nothing more. For me that wasn’t very intriguing. I am more of a
guy that is interested in the sciences and its applications in the world.
However, I had a friend tell me to give this class a shot, and being that I
trusted him, I decided to partake in a class that I thought would make me hate
literature even more than I already did. I also have to admit that I took the
class because Dr. Williams was the on teaching the course, and I had such an
amazing time in the previous course that I took with him. During the class we
discussed the syllabus and what was expected of the students. However unlike
other classes, we started discussing things that were humorous. That caught me
for a loop. I thought this was a class that was concerned with literature. Were
we not taking a class that would potentially be analyzing great works such as
Don Quixote or even Dante’s Inferno? As we started discussing humor in general
and what were things that made us laugh, my preconceived notions about the
course started to become even more wrong then before as the class went on. This
was one instance that I was actually glad to be wrong.
As the next Literature and
Civilizations classes came by, my feelings toward the class transformed from
dreading the darned thing to actually looking forward to this insightful
course. We had been given the assignment of asking people what their
definitions of literature and civilization were. Filming people’s responses
kind of spiced things up and made the assignment more enjoyable. When we
presented our results and later discussed the results, I was shocked to see
that many people had differing definitions for both literature and
civilization. Something that I thought had such an unambiguous definition
actually turned out to be the exact opposite. For instance what constitutes as
literature? Could a novel be considered literature? What about a map? A
dictionary? Not only that but what constituted as civilization? What made one
group of people more civilized than the other? Would one group be considered
uncivilized simply because they don’t use a fork and knife for their meals?
These sorts of questions that were thrown around in the class discussion
seriously made me think. I never really put things into perspective. I had
clouded my mind with simply one way to think or interpret something. I had
failed to broaden my horizons or even think of things in another manner. Many a
time I have thought of situations as either one way or the other, as if they
were black and white. I later try to implement this kind of thinking to my
other courses. A lot of times I saw Organic Chemistry and Ecology as this
course that only had one way to approach it in order to find the solution. Man
was I wrong. Something as fragile as the environment is influenced in many
ways. Just when you think you have resolved the issue by tampering with one
variable, you find yourself either being completely wrong or causing another
problem. You have to be open-minded.
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