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Returning to College
If I thought I'd live to be a hundred, I'd go back to college next fall. I was drafted into the Army at the end of my junior year and, after four years in the service, had no inclination to return to finish. By then, it seemed, I knew everything.
Well, as it turns out, I don't know everything, and I'm ready to spend some time learning. I wouldn't want to pick up where I left off. I'd like to start all over again as a freshman. You see, it isn't just the education that appeals to me. I've visited a dozen colleges in the last two years, and college life looks extraordinarily pleasant.
The young people on campus are all gung ho to get out and get at life. They don't seem to understand they're having one of its best parts. Here they are with no responsibility to anyone but themselves, a hundred or a thousand ready-made friends, teachers trying to help them, families at home waiting for them to return for Christmas to tell all about their triumphs, three meals a day - so it isn't gourmet food - but you can't have everything.
Too many students don't really have much patience with the process of being educated. They think half the teachers are idiots, and I wouldn't deny this. They think the system stinks sometimes. I wouldn't deny that. They think there aren't any nice girls/boys around. I'd deny that. They just won't know what an idyllic time of life college can be until it's over.
The students are anxious to acquire the knowledge they think they need to make a buck, but they aren't really interested in education for education's sake. That's where they're wrong, and that's why I'd like to go back to college. I know now what a joy knowledge can be, independent of anything you do with it.
I'd take several courses in philosophy. I like the thinking process that goes with it. Philosophers are fairer than is absolutely necessary, but I like them, even the ones that I think are wrong. Too much of what I know of the great philosophers comes secondhand or from condensations. I'd like to take a course in which I actually had to read Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Spinoza, Locke, John Dewey and the other great thinkers.
I'd like to take some calculus, too. I have absolutely no ability in that direction and not much interest, either, but there's something going on in mathematics that I don't understand, and I'd like to find out what it is. My report cards won't be mailed to my father and mother, so I won't have to worry about marks. I bet I'l1 do better than when they were mailed.
There are some literary classics I ought to read and I never will, unless I'm forced to by a good professor, so I'll take a few courses in English literature. I took a course that featured George Gordon Byron, usually referred to now as "Lord Byron," and I'd like to take that over again. I did very well in it the first time. I actually read all of Don Juan and have never gotten over how great it was. I know I could get an A in that if I took it over. I'd like to have a few easy courses.
My history is very weak, and I'd want several history courses. I'm not going to break my back over them, but I'd like to be refreshed about the broad outline of history. When someone says sixteenth century to me, I'd like to be able to it with some names and events. This is just a little conversational conceit, but that's life.
If I can find a good teacher, I'd certainly want to go back over English grammar and usage. He'd have to be good, because you might not think so sometimes, but I know a lot about using the language. Still, there are times when I'm stumped. I was wondering the other day what part of speech the word "please" is in the sentence, "Please don't take me seriously."
I've been asked to speak at several college graduation ceremonies. Maybe if I graduate, they'll ask me to speak at my own.
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