Modernist poetry is like hipster clothing: its purpose is not to be beautiful but to be "unique."

On Being a Torrey Nerd

I went to a lecture tonight about possibly working with Wheatstone in the future. Because it is run by Torrey people, it is just as nerdy as Torrey, and I love it.

The speaker outlined the two dominant Torrey alumni dream lives. I found this hilarious because I want both of those things, too.

Option #1: Live in a little cottage in the mountains with your family where you have children and raise them to love God and books while you read poetry, love art, write books, discuss everything and tend to your garden or apple orchard.

Option #2: The life outlined in Dr. Reynold's Torrientation speech, where you spend four intense years learning about great books, God, goodness, truth, beauty, and Plato, then go out and change the world because the fate of Western civilization lies on our shoulders.

Needless to say, this is hard to reconcile because I desperately want to do both. But I think it can be done some way. (And the speaker gave us ideas, and didn't just let us ponder it for two hours like a Torrey tutor would.) And I want to do it. I want to live a virtuous life, engage the culture in the intellectual life it is missing, mentor teenagers, write blog posts, live in the mountains with goats and chickens, and rock the world.

I love being a Torrey nerd. I love the people I get to be nerdy with, I love the tutors and mentors, I love the challenge, the books, the thoughts, community, the jokes, the world-changing attitude, the encouragement to live for God and be the best you can be. I want to bring this to more people. I want high school students to see the adventure in learning and learn not for the sake of the grade, but for the sake of the betterment of their souls. I want to show teenagers that thinking is awesome and wonderful and much more satisfying than television. I want to teach world-changers in the same way that I am being taught to change the world.

And now to get into the practical application of all this: reading Augustine and figuring out a thesis for my paper.

(I apologize to all the non-Torrey people out there who have no idea what I am talking about.)

On Loving Something Because It's Hard

I was brought up in a culture where the easy stuff is considered the most appealing. Students take certain classes because they can get an easy A. I bought into that mentality very easily. After all, who wants to work twice as hard and do twice as much homework if you can get the same grade by doing less work?

High school debate was my introduction into loving something because it was hard. I was most definitely not a good debater. But I loved it anyway. It presented a challenge, and it gave me incentive to work and learn in a different way than I was used to. It stretched me more than I could ever imagine. It also brought me some of my greatest joys from high school.

Torrey is something else that I love because it is hard. It requires hours reading books that were written centuries ago. It requires pulling all-nighters to write a ten-page paper. It requires deciphering Spenserian poetry. But I love it anyway. More accurately, I love it because it's so hard. It challenges me. It teaches me things that cannot be learned from reading a textbook. It brings meaning to my life and teaches me to appreciate the vast amount of history that occurred before my lifetime.

It may be weird to say that I love Torrey because it is so hard for me, but it's true. Needless to say, I will still worry about Don Rags until tomorrow morning when it is over.

My Exploded Mind in Blog Post Form

Why do I always walk out a Reynolds lecture feeling more depressed, inspired, doomed, encouraged, confused, and enlightened?

All at the same time.

For Torrey students: Imagine a session Dante's Paradise with Dr. Campbell and then a Reynolds lecture on Plato. Yes. That really happened.

For non-Torrey people: Imagine having your brain removed, put into a blender, and then put back in your head and then being told to go out into the world and function. That was what I experienced tonight.

I walked away with so many musing. The essence of education is not to train me for whatever I plan to do after graduation. It isn't to get me to know the facts. It's to build my character. It gives me a brand new way of looking at my education. I'm not here to figure out to get my reading done most quickly so I have time to still hang out with my friends. It's about how much I can get out of the text. I am so conditioned into the English class reading where I spend the whole time looking for answers to reading comprehension questions that I perpetually forget that this text is what is important. That skimming doesn't work. That session will be even more enjoyable once I learn to love whichever book I'm reading. I am here to become a virtuous young woman who follows Christ. There's no short-cut to learning virtue. Hard work brings out the best and the worst in people. I think education is fundamentally about doing the hard work and teaching yourself to go through the hard work so that it brings out the best in you instead of the worst. And, along the way, learning important lessons from Plato, Dante, Virgil, Homer, and all those other dead guys.

I need to learn to know myself first. I'm not being selfish. But before I can go out and do amazing things for the world, it would help if I had a few things worked out first. Like what I believe. Because some days I honestly don't know. Like who I am and why I matter to God. Like what is the purpose of this whole adventure I've come to know as life. Big questions. I need to answer each and every one of these (along with others) before I can try to answer these questions for others. Walking into a coffee shop and telling the waitress she should believe in Christ because Dr. Reynolds has this awesome little quip isn't going to cut it. I have to really know it and love it for myself.

It's okay that I am confused. In fact, if I wasn't confused right now, there would be something very wrong. As a Torrey freshman, I am supposed to feel overwhelmed, confused, bewildered, and maybe even frightened. My guess is that this is the humbling process, which is something I have desperately needed and will continue to need.

Something else got me to thinking: Dr. Reynolds asked us, "Do you love people, or do you love what they can do for you?" Considering I just changed my major to sociology, a very people-related field, this is a good question for me to be asking. I like to think of people as living stories, but sometimes I forget to see them that way. I forget that they have pasts, presents, and futures, that they experience emotions, that they need to be served. I reduce them to one aspect of their personality. But people aren't here for me to know them by how they can best help me. People are here to be loved. If I see people for what they can to do for me, I will turn into Judas. That is a sobering thought. Judas used the King of kings for personal gain. That is not what I want to turn into. Christ says that what I do to the least of these, I do to Him. If that's true, when I love people because of what I can get out of them, I am doing this to Christ. I am being a Judas. The one Christ said it would have been better for him if he was never born. Criminy.

Lastly, if I wasn't already convicted enough, Dr. Reynolds issued to us a challenge: Are you willing to wonder? Wondering is hard work. It makes you question the very essence of life. I will question my most deeply-held beliefs. I will have to consider on any given issue, that I may be wrong and that if I am, this could change my entire worldview. But the good news is that wonder never ceases. It will keep happening and keep making me grow. It will be what builds me into a virtuous young woman: wondering and thinking.

I'm so confused right now. Yet so satisfied with my mind as it is. That's what a steady diet of goodness, truth, and beauty does to a young soul who isn't used to being challenged beyond what she could ever imagine.