Liberal Arts Lectures

We had our weekly lecture this Monday on geography of all things. All I knew about geography was that you’ve got to memorize a lot of capitals and Brad Brogden had it as his major at some point in college and all us young-uns laughed about it. However, it was quite possibly my favorite lecture! Past lectures have been memorable as well for their own reasons.

The first week (which was technically the third week of school) inspired me, with a lecture from one of our three Liberal Arts Honors (LAH) College sponsors. With serious doubts about even remaining in liberal arts studies at this time, he helped to remind me why I originally joined it (with lots of jokes interspersed making fun of the business school). I think it especially appealed to me because his allusions and stories were based largely on a combination of mythology and reason.

In week 2, anthropology was the subject. The field appeals to me out of a combination of the love of history and science, and my misguided childhood dreams of becoming an archaeologist. The speaker was energetic and clearly loved his job, which involved studying lemurs.

In week 3, a philosophy professor came and taught. He spoke about the fundamentals of philosophy, which was interesting, but for the most part already to known to me. The best part about this week was the essay prompt, which boiled down to “Does philosophy exist and if so, can there ever be any philosophical progress?” I referred to it lovingly as the Question Everything! Paper.

In week 4, an English professor, specializing in Shakespeare, came and talked to us about The Winter’s Tale. I know I would have enjoyed it more had I read the play at that point, but it was still fun, with student enactments of the opening scene and helpful/interesting discussion, giving me ideas to consider when reading it for the first time.

In week 5, we talked about economics. The lecture was based on a survey half-heartedly completed by all the LAH students about time management, on weekdays and weekends, this year and last year. I say half-heartedly because a large number of the surveys produced 30-hour days. To be fair, one of mine was 25 hours, but only because I didn’t want to use decimals, and I didn’t figure 0 was entirely accurate for Time Spent Eating. This was a long day, in which I only remember one funny line. “My favorite response to time spent studying last year was ‘Haha!’ I wasn’t exactly sure how to code that, but I thought zero was a safe estimate.” Socioeconomics just doesn’t interest me very much. It felt too much like my statistics class last year: learning lots of time-consuming methods to display answers I can already figure out on my own.

In week 6 (last week), the favorite speaker of most came and gave his comedy performance. The lecture dealt with the evolution of human mating and was simultaneously captivating and depressing. Hearing the theories of an evolutionary psychologist was new and unbelievably intriguing, but made me feel terrible for being a man. We listened to an hour of evidence, explaining how we boil down to unappeasable sex-machines, wired singularly to seduce and destroy. The most telling study involved random approaches in a mall. He organized an experiment in which a fairly attractive male would approach a random female in a mall setting. The male would then state, “I’ve noticed you around campus…” and then ask one of three questions:
One: “…Would you like to go on a date with me?” Shockingly, 50% of the women agreed to this random question. Shame on you, 50%.
Two: ”…Would you like to come back to my apartment?” Still to me shockingly, but significantly lower thank God, 6% of the women agreed.
Three: “…Would you like to have sex with me?” 0% Again, thank God. I would lose a little faith if women started agreeing to this with only the opening statement “I’ve noticed you around campus.” The follow-up question doesn’t exactly follow logically.
You can probably guess where this is going. The experiment was then applied to males, approached by attractive (but not goddess) females.
One: 50% Wow, I guess men just aren’t patient enough.
Two: 69%...Sufficiently depressing. Everyone laughs.
Three: 75%...Spectacularly depressing. Everyone laughs harder.
When I left, I had a smile on my face from the entertainment, an urge to call Andrew, and a further loss of faith in humanity.

All that brings us up to this week. Our first woman speaker, the professor and self-proclaimed geek held my attention for the entire 75 minutes. I didn’t even look at my watch. She was extremely confident and goofy and of course very funny. Her lecture included (I just had the urge to use the word plethora but I abhor it so!) BUNCHES of information on what research is done in geography, along with findings from her own. She quoted Tennyson with his words of nature red in tooth and claw, compared herself to a snowflake, “individually schizophrenic,” and explained her liberal arts career goals in the form of a cute chart of Discipline over Time. She first described two basic career paths. The first was the person who knows what they are going to be and strictly adheres to it –a slightly sloping linear graph. The second was the person who may change focuses once or twice and settle –looked a bit like a sine function. The third was her own. The fade in of the line began with a huge bubble, not even on the chart, and went on to reveal a random squiggly mess -clearly not a function. That’s how I would describe my career goals as well. She completed the lecture, and I had been instilled with a heavily romanticized idea of geography and was ready to move to Peru and become a geographer without a second thought. She had yet to give out the assignment yet though. She finished a few minutes late and all around me people were putting folders and notebooks up, readying to leave. She then read the prompt: "Technology evolves, though differentially. The environment changes and fluctuates... with and without us. Quality of life globally is shifting... and widening. I just want you to react." Muttering arose from all over the auditorium, from which I picked out words like dumb, stupid, and pointless. Over the rabble, our speaker announced loudly the final three words of the prompt: “IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER.” In our crowd of 150, there was silence. Some further muttering sprung up again, this time with words I won’t repeat, while I couldn’t help from laughing loudly aloud. It’s amazing how angry three words can make people. I’m excited; I have a geography paper to write in iambic pentameter! I must be the biggest nerd alive.