The Human Condition

A topic that interests all of us is something we find ourselves dealing with on a daily basis – the human condition. It is about who we are as a society, where we’ve come from, how we’ve developed, and where we’re headed. In one way or another, everybody has expressed an interest in this subject.

As a member of the Ball State Honors College, this is a subject you will explore in great depth. Honors College students call this part of your experience “the Humanities sequence.” Each of the 3 Humanities courses focuses on an era of time, beginning with “The Ancient World” and continuing through “The Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment” to “The Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Centuries.”

They recommend taking the entire sequence with the same professor, but it’s not necessary. By sheer chance, I ended up with my prof and I’m planning to continue with his classes (I got an A on a paper last week!!). I’m in the second course right now. So far, we’ve read pieces by Aristotle and Plato, and famous works like The Iliad and Othello, as well as Eastern texts by Buddha, Confucius, and Chuang Chou (he’s my favorite).

The other night, I was reading an assignment for the second course (Machiavelli’s The Prince, actually) and got to thinking... I find myself constantly complaining about how much reading there is for Humanities or how boring the Humanities readings are. Ask my roommate, she’ll tell you.

Yet, as I was thinking about it, I realized how many times I’ve actually understood a reference on TV or in a magazine because of something we read in Humanities. Just the references in Machiavelli alone to Virgil’s Aeneid are enough to convince me. If that’s not enough for you though, I found a song by Switchfoot called “Something More (Augustine’s Confession)” and realized that that song was based off of Augustine’s Confessions. Oh my gosh, I get the reference! It happens so often that sometimes I don’t even notice it. But when I pay attention, it’s amazing. That small buzz of excitement; it makes you feel so smart! As frustrating as the number of seemingly boring reading assignments is for Humanities, the ability to relate coursework to real life is so worth it.

Yeah, that was a total plug for Honors College, but I didn’t mean for it to be. Honest. I just had this realization that the work I’ve been slaving away at for Humanities has actually taught me something. I feel more worldly and educated already. Honors College is worth the extra application and effort!

Trust me.