I Can Be Smart, Too?

College is supposed to make you smarter but I fear it has had the opposite effect. I am having trouble stringing together coherent thoughts to make up a record of my day. Instead I'll just use bullet points.
Today I:
- burned my thumb making my third cup of super-strong coffee illegally in my room (thank God for the French Press!!)
- learned to read and write five Arabic letters
- spent almost three hundred dollars on text books just for two classes
- napped
- sat in the grass on the quad and felt collegiate
- was surprised by a professor

Ok, that last one deserves some explanation because I'm actually kind of excited about it. I signed up for a political science class on a whim. I loved reading about politics in the news and hoped to one day report on international politics so I thought it would be nice to know more about the core of modern and traditional politics. So I thought I'd start with Political Theory. John Locke, Whatshisname Hobbs, and the likes. I wasn't expecting it to be a fun class. I thought it would be interesting but not fun by any means.

Then I see that the class is in Gifford Theater, a lecture class. Definitely not a fun class, I thought. But I sat down with my pen and clean new notebook prepared to learn. There were a lot of sophomores and upperclassmen but I think it was a pretty good mix of grades, which is nice. The professor walked in, an older man of color. I have horrible eyesight and was sitting towards the back of the theater so I couldn't quite tell if he was black or Indian or Middle Easter or what. But he spoke with a very distinctive accent. Great, I thought, a lecture with a professor I'm going to have trouble understanding.

But then he started asking questions. Not exactly how most lecture classes begin. "What do you think of evolutionary theory?" he asked the class. I had a moment of terror. Was I in the wrong class? Was this some biology class? What does Darwin have to do with political theory?

From that first, seemingly random question, he was off and running and he was pulling the class along with him. He wasn't lecturing us in any way, he was engaging us, challenging us to think. Are humans selfishi? Are humans essentially good but scared to help each other? Look at the Kitty Genovese case, 38 witnesses to a rape and not one called the police. Why?

It was a fascinating discussion on its own but Professor Thomas made it exciting and fun. He kept us on our toes, pointing to random students and asking their opinions. Joking around with us. He said "fuck" and "shit" and didn't use the pretentious vocabulary of academia even though I could tell he was extremely intelligent. At one point he gave one student the finger as a joke.

I have never been more shocked but in a great way. Now, I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester, eager to see what Professor Thomas comes up with next.

I think this is what I'm going to love the most about college: being surprised and challenged and engaged by great academic experiences.


Ok, now I have to memorize all the various forms of five Arabic letters and take a Grammar Slammer quiz for my Communications class (apparently some people can get to college and not know grammar...and they want to be journalists?).