Honors this semester...is awful. I am having the hardest time adjusting to the material and the lack of challenge. I miss having this blog where we can each argue our positions on the material, I miss having legitimate discussions in class, I miss struggling with truth. Why have we replaced philosophical debates with the social origins of hipsters and scene kids? Where has our IQ gone? What happened to the unity that Dr. Mitchell so eloquently referred to last semester? I ended my first semester at UM intellectually exhausted yet stimulated. I was beyond excited about returning to honors; honors had become a safe-harbor, home even. I felt like I was going to be able to jump right into the madness this semester and finally open up in class, but I am utterly discouraged right now to say the least and have thus retreated back into a little corner of my mind. All I can think is I just want to quit and return to the tasteless normalcy of basic lit courses.
S.O.S!?
Sam, the lack of unity you detect in class is real. In fact, it is inherent in the Patristic texts we are studying at the moment. The fourth century A.D. is a watershed moment between the decline of the old Greco-Roman Synthesis and the rise of a new Medieval Synthesis, which took a good thousand years to reach its full maturity in the art, architecture, and poetry of the High Middle Ages. I encourage patience. The Classical Synthesis took a good thousand years to develop, and a whole semester to articulate. You can expect similar things from the Medieval Synthesis that replaced it.
ReplyDelete- Dr. Schuler