In my opinion, Furman is a place I have to take one day at a time.
This is not just because of the academic work, but also just the demands of
college, and being on my own for the first time. The thought of trying to plan
out every single day for an entire week is overwhelming. The course work is not
challenging in that I feel completely lost, but the amount and level of
thinking vary drastically from that of high school. This is a good thing; I
want it to, otherwise I would not be here! I find that when I feel stressed
because there is not time to do any work, the beauty of my surroundings
overwhelms my senses, and all problems disappear. There is so much opportunity
here, and I know it is the perfect fit for me.
In my First Year Seminar To Walk The Land,
taught by Dr. Ranson, we kayak, hike local trails, perform trail maintenance,
and just take in the scenery of our surroundings. In this class, we are
currently reading a book called Earth in
Mind on Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect by David W. Orr. This book is fantastic because it talks about the
problems with our modern day education, and how it does not touch on any environmental
issues.
I want to share one of my favorite quotes from Orr:
“A fourth myth of higher education is that we can adequately restore
that which we have dismantled. I am referring to the modern curriculum. We have
fragmented the world into bits and pieces called disciplines and disciplines, hermetically
sealed from other such disciplines. As a result, after 12 or 16 or 20 years of
education, most students graduate without any broad, integrated sense of the unity
of things. The consequences for their personhood and for the planet are large…We
add the price of the sale of a bushel of wheat to the gross national product
while forgetting to subtract the three bushels of topsoil lost to grow it. As a
result of incomplete education, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we
are much richer than we are. The same point could be made about other
disciplines and sub disciplines that have become hermetically sealed from life itself.”
After reading this, I
realized how fortunate I am to be at a liberal arts institution. I know at
Furman I will never be lost or fooled like the educated in Orr’s example. Since
Furman is liberal arts, every class can have a relation, whether it is between math
and English, or art and physics. I know this to be true because I have already
witnessed it happen between the classes I am currently taking.
Orr says that the planet needs people “of moral courage willing to
join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have
little to do with success as our culture had defined it” (Orr 12).
Well, I am willing to join in that fight, and I am so happy to
have Furman as an ally.
Orr, David W. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human
Prospect. Washington, DC:
Island, 1994. Print.
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| Earth in Mind |
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| Trail maintenance |
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| A member of the fishing team holding a catfish from the lake (catch and release don't worry) |
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