It begins again...

In the last four years I have been to four different colleges in two different states, studied under twenty-two different professors and lived in five different houses or apartments. I've taken twenty-four classes and written hundreds of pages of papers. I pulled upwards of thirty all-nighters (admittedly not all for academic purposes) during the first semester of freshman year, and I stopped counting after that. I have spent countless hours in libraries grand and modest, paid thousands of dollars into institutions large and small, and read or skimmed more books and articles than I could ever recount. I have failed tests and aced exams, earned scholarships and lost them in kind, turned in badly written papers and left others wholly unwritten. I have consumed a thousand (or two) cups of coffee, smoked a hundred cigarettes, and ingested one Red Bull energy drink (never again).

All of this to say, I refuse to have it count for nothing. I find myself here in the deep middle throes of my education, with at least two years ahead of me before I can even hope to see a degree. And if I have gleaned any ideal, maintained any hope, or clung to any purpose throughout the tumultuous last few years, it is that I want-- beyond any major, beyond any degree, beyond any college-- to be educated. I want this in the purest and most liberal sense, and the purpose of this blog is to chronicle my attempts at achieving it, although of course this kind of pursuit is lifelong and will never culminate completely, much less reach an end with any turning of a tassel.

I am enrolled as a student at the University of Georgia-- a public research university established by the land-grant act of 1865, a piece of legislation which I have researched zealously and concluded dealt irreparable damage to the core understanding of the liberal arts within the realm of higher education. My artes liberales sensibilities are admittedly deigning legitimacy to that UGA status, though I hope to be pleasantly surprised by what I find here. (Perhaps one day I'll address the issue of the value of education on this blog. Can you put a price on true education? On classes such as Kreeft's Logic or Jackson's Research Writing?-- to which [to whom?] I owe entirely the composition of this paragraph and in great proportion my educational mindset. My college journey thus far would indicate that I have indeed put a price on it, or rather decided that its realization may not have to be so exclusive as I would like to believe if one only puts in the necessary legwork. A matter of discussion for another time.)

So, quite overwhelmed and with not a little self-impressed pride, I embark. I'll post here papers I write, assignments I find valuable, summaries of books and articles I read (and want to read), and likely a conglomerate mess of other musings. And poetry. There will of course be poetry on this blog, because, as Dr. J taught me via H.I. Marrou,

"There are things that a poet feels and makes you feel at once, and which no amount of science can ever fathom. The result is that an 'oratorical' kind of education, which in appearance is entirely a matter of aesthetics, whose one aim is to create 'wizards with words,' is in fact the most effective way of developing subtlety of thought."

An education. Here we go!