Across the Pond: #collegelife

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.