Students at Hillsdale College enroll in a multidisciplinary classical liberal arts core curriculum, taking nearly half of their four years. Explain your interest in this educational approach.
If a man wants to enrich his life and enlighten his vision, he should familiarize himself with the broadest scope of the greatest things that have ever been thought, written, or created. The effect that this has on one’s consciousness is profound. When the novice begins approaching great literature his consciousness is a weak and loose amalgam of experience and mediocre thinking, but the great author takes this rough slab of marble (the reader’s consciousness) and begins chiseling away. For sculptors work with marble, carpenters wood, and artists paint and canvas, but the author uses words.
Words are fundamentally symbols for meaning, and the great author uses simple words in grand ways, forever altering the reader’s understanding of their meaning. Therefore, the author uses meaning (words) as his tool to mold his reader’s consciousness (his medium); he sculpts a person’s consciousness with a profound or peculiar meaning.
Allowing oneself to be sculpted and formed by the greatest that has ever been written raises the level of one’s consciousness: one’s ability to think, speak, write, hear, see, and smell. It leaves one more human, more capable of expressing the truth with eloquence and living the good with exuberance. I hope to attend Hillsdale because I no longer believe that this ennobling endeavor should be treated as carelessly, as “a hobby.” In fact, it deserves the first fruits of my time, energy, and attention. I hope to attend Hillsdale, specifically, so my consciousness can be shaped by its liberal arts core curriculum.
The pursuit of truth leads to eternal questions, including the question of God. What role do you see faith playing in your learning at Hillsdale?
People are fascinated by origins, by foundations. We want to know how couples first met, and we read biographies to ponder the formation of great men. This interest results from an inherent knowledge that the growth and development of anything is done only in proportion to its foundation, recall Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish builders.
Hillsdale has a strong foundation, being founded by classically educated Christian preachers in 1844, and it remains great because it has been faithful to its founding principles. My love for learning began with reading and writing, but my love of reading began with the Bible and my love of writing began while journaling my prayers. This is my foundation, and, like Hillsdale’s, it is deeply Christian; however, unlike Hillsdale, I have been unfaithful to my origins. Each time I have switched my major at LSU, I have ignored my innate interests for literature and language. Hillsdale’s curriculum would allow me to return my original interests, while teaching me of the “highest things” that would strengthen my character.
The culture at LSU is hedonistic and secular, and there are many temptations and trials that have led plenty to abandon their Christianity. I am blessed that my faith has “weathered these storms,” but merely surviving is far from thriving. So, I yearn to attend a university with a strong, Christian foundation that will nourish my faith— my foundation, and I have little faith that any university other than Hillsdale is equipped to successfully do this.
Who (not what) do you hope to become as a result of your experience at Hillsdale?
The good of anything is found in its ability to accomplish the purpose it was created for. It is difficult to realize one’s purpose, one’s sacred individuality. It requires that one first submit his will to God’s, then that he purges himself of everything that is not of God. This purging process is never complete, but the more completely one can separate the wheat from chaff within himself the more himself he will become.
While one works to align himself with the Good, he must simultaneously strive to discover what is uniquely his— what the Father had placed within him at the beginning. Exploration is essential at this phase, one must sample many different subjects and paths, all the while listening closely to his soul, which whispers either “yes” or “no.” All things are not for everyone, and one must find what draws near to him uniquely; otherwise, he may never become himself but a loose amalgam of those he admires.
Walter Pater talks of how the prime aesthetic achievement of the Romantics was their attachment of strangeness to beauty. An object is strange in the ways that it is different, in the ways that it is unique. The closer one gets to becoming himself, the further he gets from the norm, and the stranger and (in the High Romantic sense) more beautiful he becomes. I hope Hillsdale can help me filter and find myself, so I can become myself— but myself more truly and more strange.
Discuss how an event or circumstance, literary or artistic work, or personal experience has significantly influenced your life.
In my first semester at LSU, I took a course that had a blatant Marxist and postmodern bias. Each lie taught in this class created discord within my soul, and I became disillusioned with my professors and university. I decided to take full responsibility for my education¾I resolved to educate myself. From thenceforward I would hastily complete my daily coursework so I could have ample time to wander through LSU’s incredible (though neglected) library.
Through self-education I was finding the intellectual “meat” I starved for, and I could no longer subsist on the (sour)“milk” my formal education was offering. At this time, I began discovering the lectures of Dr. Jordan Peterson, who discussed the dangers of liberal ideology in universities and the damage these beliefs caused in the humanities. I also began reading widely: I was reading the classics and explicatory works about them. I specifically remember The Western Canon by Harold Bloom and How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler having a profound impact on me.
Under the influence of these works, I began crafting my classical self-education curriculum. It became my obsession. I thought about its design continuously for about a year. I am sure I put over a thousand hours into it, yet it still isn’t finished, and I hope it will never be.
Amid crafting my curriculum, I took a summer road trip through the west with one of my friends. One night we quickly became too tired to continue driving, so we had to park the van in an eerie Nevadan desert and sleep— we prayed for safety. But that night we were roused by a man whose eyes were unruly, he seemed only to have evil intentions. I was horrified, and I believed I’d be murdered. While facing death, there was only one thing I could think, “If I die tonight, I’ll never get to read through my list.”
This thought haunted me, and I was ashamed of it. Why wasn’t I thinking of my family or, more
importantly, my savior? Then one day God answered this riddle for me. He explained that this mattered to me because it was my life’s task— that the man he wants me to become is on the other side of my “list,” and that my transformation would occur in pursuit of it. This revelation struck me and gave my pursuit an urgency and almost religious importance.
My pursuit was always willfully solitary though, I thought isolation would guarantee the purity of my endeavor. But my perspective shifted after being taught by an amazing teacher, Professor Crump. She was a beautiful, Christian, elderly lady that adored poetry. She cared nothing for ideology, but only aesthetic achievement, so we only read the High Romantics. This class showed me my need for great teachers, and I was beginning to doubt whether I could achieve my education alone.
Then, the following summer, I worked at a church and was surrounded by amazing people. We were all oriented towards God, and I learned the value of having a community to pursue virtue with (something I had previously thought more noble to pursue alone). I realized that I made more progress relationally and personally in one summer than I had in four years at LSU. I began to dread the thought of returning— there was a deep longing in me for a new environment where I could freely pursue God and my education with others.
I continuously prayed about this, and soon after Jordan Peterson released a podcast with Dr. Arnn, the president of Hillsdale. As I listened, I felt in my spirit that this was my next step, but it seemed too outrageous, too irresponsible. But I kept praying and God kept opening each closed door, leaving it to me to act. I needed to be courageous and walk, which is what I’m doing now— faithfully taking another step.