My Village Essay 200 Words

My Village Essay 200 Words There is an understanding at St. John’s that accumulating knowledge is not the end, but rather, being edified by truth. The process begins with the questions and reflections required by a St. John’s. education, the kind of education I aspire to have. And so, I aspire to honestly pursue truth at St. John’s College. Every part of the model and curriculum at St. John’s encourages an honest pursuit of truth, but the classroom discussions most of all. I want all the above because ignorance is a killer, and willful ignorance is the biggest killer we face as a nation. Unhealthy diets and alcohol-fueled accidents are leading causes of death. We let talking heads and sound bites guide our politics, our philosophy, and our way of life. Whether it is a Republican or a Democrat, a talking head is a talking head, and a blind decision is a blind decision, no matter what choice you make. The liturgy of every class-- beginning with a single question and every individual being addressed as Mr. or Ms.-- reflects a zealous love of truth. In the classroom, ideas and individuals are honored accordingly. Astoundingly, Johnnies spend every class with individuals who probably have entirely different career goals. In their honest pursuit of truth, they recognize that preparing for a career and to be fully human should be one and the same. Furthermore, they know this largely happens in discussions about Great Books around small tables. There is no mention of her being involved romantically, marrying, or even considering a family - she is unapologetically independent. Despite this, there is a calm joy in her independence, and her adventures to faraway places seem to fill her life with meaning. I have longed for this freedom all my life, and it has been my ultimate goal in pursuing colleges, careers, mentors, and even social circles. The narrator is a niece, so Miss Rumphius had to have had a sibling, but the young Alice speaks only of her aunt, and so was born my dreams of being an inspirational aunt myself. We are discovering adventure, one page at a time. Kierkegaard and St. John’s are attractive for similar reasons. Either/Or ends with the statement, “Only the truth which edifies is truth for you.” A St. John’s student, Alec Bianco, shared how his music tutor commended him for trying to live musically throughout his life. Having tasted this kind of discussion in high school, I will seek it out the rest of my life. This perspective is increasingly, and tragically, rare in a world obsessed with information and afraid of questions. The sun has set early, so a lamp is on, shining warm light onto the pages. A roommate is across from me reading the same book, and every couple minutes we stop to comment. I stayed up late the night before reading a different book, and though we have only just started reading this one, we are both hooked. I want to go to St. John’s because the whole methodology is in such a way that I can begin to love math. Every tutorial and seminar is taught with this same level of depth and understanding. At St. John’s math has life, beauty, purpose and in college I don’t want to wonder why the quadratic formula is written the way it is, I want to know. There have been so many times in high school where we’ve been assigned some math problem for homework and I would just be completely confused by it. For me, that answer doesn’t help, but only leaves me more confused and mystified by math. Intellectual complacency even pervades higher education where students are more concerned with marketing themselves and acquiring credentials than pursuing truth and acquiring wisdom. Beliefs are too often determined by trends and political bias, because in the social media age, how we are perceived matters more to us than what we actually think. I can’t help but think that if more people read Descartes, Plato, and maybe even the U.S. Constitution, we’d have a higher level of political discourse and a better government. This may not have hit me with the same depth at age five as it does now, but looking back at Miss Rumphius, I can see the sowing of my current thought processes. The main character is the narrator’s great aunt, not her mother or grandmother.