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Now, everyone always says that, even if you never had to study in high school, you’ll have to do so in college–like, it’s harder material or something. Really, though, I just don’t see it. Perhaps it’s just the subject matter I’ve had to learn thus far–it is, after all, only my third semester–but I don’t believe I’ve studied once since I came here. Heck, didn’t even really read most of the Greek Tragedies last semester (my Ancient Philosophy teacher now, though, came up with the rather effective method of having us answer questions on it the night before), and somehow managed to pull a B in that class (without once opening cliffnotes, thank you very much).

Maybe I’m just relatively intelligent and soak up information easily–actually, that’s a lot of why I was able to pull off homeschooling as easily as I did (no bragging intended, but I learn essentially anything very quickly)–but I’m thinking it’s possible that it was more just a staple of the humanities I’ve been stuck in during my time here–that is, that they’re F-ing easy. After all, an Engineer asks, “how does it work?”, a Physicist asks, “why does it work?”, and a Liberal Arts major asks, “do you want fries with that?”

See, there’s this interesting thing that my teachers have been doing: almost every one of them has said something to the effect of, “I’m making the final (or midterm, as it were) as easy as possible for you guys.” Only my Greek Tragedy teacher (a rather elderly woman named–I kid you not–Ms. Packman) said anything near, “I’m making the final challenging.”

And it was fairly challenging–I rather wish I had studied, though apparently (thank the Lord) my GPA didn’t suffer too much from this. But it got me thinking (you know, the way a floor tile might–it doesn’t take much) that the professors I’ve had haven’t been too concerned with reasoning through problems–well, I guess I shouldn’t really expect them to be (after all, there aren’t really any problems in these subjects through which one can reason). No, scratch that. It’s that they’re not concerned with deep understanding of the material (there we go!), so much as letting those who are incapable of deep understanding pass the class and give the professor a good end-of-semester review. And that’s basically what it all comes down to–temporarily memorizing enough of the material to get as many people the best grades possible so that the professor gets… well, I’m not sure, but I guess so their department doesn’t get downsized (not like the really good ones can get a raise or anything at a public university. Yay, negative reinforcement!)

Frankly, I’m just annoyed by the lack of active thinking that’s been going on here, and how the professors don’t even try to really challenge our minds–even in my Logic and my Ancient Philosophy class. Yeah, Plato does challenge the mind to a certain extent in his writings, and it’s obvious that the students are looking for challenges to their thinking (probably more than they know) by the fact that we probably spend around half of every lecture with people just raising their hands to comment on and find loopholes in the arguments presented by the readings, but the professor himself seems to be more or less like the others–but I could be wrong; if you’re terribly curious, I can let you know after our first exam.

Perhaps it’s just humanities. Perhaps there’s no need for a deeper understanding, since there are no lines of classes (like, say, Calculus, which comes in three semesters) and no information relying on previous knowledge. Perhaps this simply isn’t exactly the right subject-matter for me. But I’m inclined to think it’s just the time and culture we’re in (My unhappiness? Totally not my fault)–after all, my old Greek Tragedy teacher managed a challenging final–and that’s literature, for goodness’ sake! Really, it’s possible to make young people think (no matter what the old coots say)–I mean, actively think. Like, critically, with their left frontal lobe–and it just disappoints me that this doesn’t happen.

Then again, perhaps I’m overestimating the mental capabilities of my peers… in which case, they should be encouraged more towards trade school and less toward scholarship where they’ll only stay a couple years dragging the rest of us like this, and drop out to work at McDonald’s.

Well, that was a rant to an extent. I guess this answers my question about whether or not I want to go into a more science-oriented sort of path, though.