Oberlin Blogs

Several weeks ago, I found myself on a top floor balcony suite at a ski resort 300 miles away, talking and sharing laughs with a couple of the freshest talents out of Cleveland. How did I wind up there?

In this post: Mad Max , our inevitable doom, The Communist Manifesto , superempirical virtues in theory choice, Stanley Fish, those problematic humanities, and a way-too-long post.

For three weeks of the year, the walls of the Bent corridor (which I totally thought was just a descriptor, not the name of two illustrious alumni, up until last week) are graced with beautiful local artwork from students from the 9th Congressional District. I was ever so lucky to be there photographing it.

The challenge over the month came in donning both roles--as both a teacher and a student--all while being reassured along the way that we were likely to catch dengue fever, get taken hostage at a Jakarta airport, and be heaved out of a moving train on our way to Moscow.

I am still here. Though I entered Oberlin with an expected graduation date of May 2016, my taking a semester off has delayed that until this upcoming semester. This reality took me a long time to accept and I have a lot of feelings about what "not graduating on time" means for me.

There were, of course, pages of specific instructions and a symbol key, but that doesn't change the fact that for my friend's recital I was required to look at a photo of a rabbit man in a suit running away from artillery fire and translate it into a part for drum set/percussion.

In fear of the real world, I resolved to do and see as many ridiculous things as I can this semester. Like swing dancing.

I'm not even a huge history buff, but there's something stirring to the soul about stumbling across an old, crumbling stone and barely being able to make out the engraved letters: Born a slave, died free.

Some people speak Spanish, French, Chinese. My friends speak Science. If I didn't speak at least some pidgin Science, I couldn't understand them at all.

He did say that there is a small chance that it will create a micro black hole that will gobble up Geneva and then the rest of the world.

A rather esoteric blog post in which I discuss postmodernism, historiography, the Middle East, new professors, great professors, and the true beauty of a liberal arts education.

Personally, I was completely terrified of the concept of office hours my freshman year. The professors were amazing and awesome and being in the same room as them one-on-one just seemed like a god-given experience, something not worthy of a lowly freshman. So, baby steps.