College orientation
So tonight I’m sitting in Columbus Ohio learning what it means to be a Buckeye while our daughter registers for classes. It’s an adjustment. I’m a Bruin – UCLA, that is. Still the similarities are striking. This college is huge… 60,000+. There are so many programs, you’d have to spend twenty years living on campus to take advantage of them all. The lecture halls resemble stadium seat movie theaters. We’re very excited for her.
Johannah is in the humanities scholars program. The program is more like an academic sorority or fraternity. These kids are housed together in a learning community meeting once a week to hang out and make plans to enrich their learning experience at OSU through enrichment activities that are specifically oriented toward the humanities. Outside of their classes, they participate in book and film discussions, they travel to big cities to see art museums, they go to the theater, they plan one trip per year that is really big (last year they went to Paris!), and they produce one group project per year that is somehow related to the humanities.
The whole description of this kind of college community left Jon and me drooling. Wouldn’t we have loved this? We kept talking about how lucky Johannah is to have such an extraordinary experience.
But you know what made me smile even more? I realized we’d been living this way Johannah’s entire life. We’ve been reading great books and discussing them since she was too young to speak, we’ve taken her to movies, plays and art museums since I pushed her in a stroller, we’ve traveled to big cities and Italy to expose her to world class master pieces and architecture. She’s been in a Scholars Humanities program… like, forever.
Should be an easy transition. 🙂
Dear Julie,
Thank you for sharing your excitement! What a great opportunity for your daugher. I had a similar experience in May when Steven and I attended the Materials Science Engineering Day. I was impressed with the small-group feel created by the administration. The students there are also a community within the larger body, taking all classes, studying, working projects, and partying together. I’m not so sure I appreciated the last item on the list, but I was awed by the plethora of opportunities. The Materials Science department has it’s own foundry; a Triton microscope (one of only two in the country); and specializations in ceramics, metals, polymers, composites, semiconductors, and biomaterials. We were not there as new students, though. We have another year to go before we reach that milestone. Steven enjoyed the experience, but has decided that engineering might not be what he wants to do. That’s good enough for me. I just wanted him to experience the day.
Jennifer
That sounds like a great program. (And my old college roommate’s brother is the assistant coach of hte hockey team. I understand they are pretty good.)