“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is one of my favorite poems for many reasons, but recently it has started to gain new meaning as I face graduation. I have started to wonder how different my life would be if I had only chosen to travel down one road instead of sprinting down both roads at the same time. When I declared my biology major, my dad expressed concern that I was choosing one possible life and career over another possibility. He said he knew how happy writing made me and he wondered if I was doing the right thing in not pursuing that. He spoke the words I had not yet spoken out loud for myself. “You shouldn’t enter college worried about what you will do when you exit,” said David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, at a World Economic Forum panel discussion last week on the state of the humanities. Rubenstein’s words are true now and they were true then: I should not have worried about choosing so soon. After I arrived at Columbia College, I began taking English courses because I could not take biology courses without at least trying to explore my passion for literature and creative writing. Thanks to time at Columbia College, I started to see the value the required courses of the WPDM major more because of what they taught me about myself than what they taught me about the subject matter. Combined with my classes, my internship experiences have confirmed that I am indeed heading in the right direction. I could not become a successful writer and biologist without the valuable set of skills that I have gained through my time at Columbia College. I believe I made the right choice by choosing both roads.
The coursework required for Writing for Print and Digital Media majors is different from the courses require...
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... Else, is essential to human existence,” (Gopnick). I agree with Gopnik, because asking why there is value in studying the humanities or pursuing a liberal arts education is like asking why there is value in breathing. History, literature, languages, philosophy, religion, music, anthropology, and art are all essential to understanding why humans are the way we are. If the humanities were not essential to our understanding of other human beings, then why are there so many blog posts, letters, Facebook posts, and Tweets being written in defense of the humanities? It is because we are human. It is essential that we should study the humanities so that we can know ourselves, the past, and the future. Because I value being well-rounded, compassionate, analytical, creative, and balanced, I value the humanities. Because I value the humanities, I take the path less traveled.
As I said before, math and science are important, but the humanities are just as important, if not more. “The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be” (Slouka). This quote taken from “Dehumanized” defines and truly puts Slouka’s beliefs into the perspective of what the humanities should teach students and how they should be taught, which I agree with fully. I believe that without the humanities, we, as humans, would all be the same and there would be no room to be different from one another. Whether it be by our culture, religion, or interests, not two people are alike. Individuals should not be bred into being something that they do not want to be or even like Slouka argues, students should not be a “capital investment” for the future of the economy. Students should be investing in themselves to express who they truly are, rather than being something that the economy expects them to
Shiffman believes that the drop in interest in the humanities results in the inability of students to have clear bearings amid life’s uncertainties. He believes that only by studying the humanities will students be able to introspect and recognize that endless achievement may not add up to a meaningful life (Shiffman 5). However, Shiffman fails to realize that this form of reflection need not be done solely by those majoring in the humanities. It can be done by all who try, their fields of study are no limitation. In fact, it may be this same reflection that leads to an individual’s decision to prioritize practicality. Not all those who choose the practical path are doing it for themselves. Many may do it for their families, as a safe and stable means of supporting their loved ones. Others may take this opportunity to give back to their community through the ways they are most skilled. Instead of pursuing a single interest in a certain field, they choose to follow their various callings. Doing solely what an individual loves is a self-centered view of the world. While it is important to chase happiness, it is also important to reflect on what one is doing to spread happiness to the rest of the world. One must find something that they are good at, and put that into the world. They should contribute to others and help the world be better, in addition to following their passions. An individual’s acts of service may just become one of their many passions.
In ancient civilization, a liberal arts education was considered essential for free people to take place in civic life; without them people would not be willing to disregard one's traditional values, and analyze a broad variety of arts, humanities, and sciences to create new opinions and ideas. In the 21st century many Americans are doubtful that liberal arts degrees are actually worth the cost of college. In his essay “The New Liberal Arts”, Sanford J. Ungar discusses seven “misconceptions” of liberal arts degrees in modern-day America.
It should not be a surprise that many people believe that a college degree is a necessity in today’s world. We are taught to believe this at a young age. The average citizen will not question this statement due to how competitive the job market has become, yet does graduating college guarantee more success down the road? Peter Brooks is a scholar at Princeton University and publisher of an essay that questions the value of college. He obviously agrees that college can help securing a job for the future, but questions the humanities about the education. He uses other published works, the pursuit of freedom, and draws on universal arguments that pull in the reader to assume the rest of his essay has valid reasons.
It’s strange that history, English, history has nothing to do with one’s major but it’s a requirement. Bok said “ Liberal art programs seldom take adequate account of the crucial importance of students’ careers- career that will inevitably affect what kind of persons they become, how well they balance the claims of work and family and what opportunities they have to serve others besides themselves” (345). This statement concluded liberal arts major is important, without it, students wouldn't be able to be successful in school. One wouldn't know how to think critically and analyze what one is learning without learning the basic subjects. Even before college, students are required to learn nothing but the basic subjects such as history, English, and math. Liberal arts take a big role in students’ education because it teaches one how to read, write and use critical thinking in the real world such as work, college, and real life
With the advent of the internet, technical schools, and computers in general, jobs today are more specialized than ever before, and they will continue to increase in particularity, thus a purely liberal arts curriculum is very untimely. Most people take four years to attain a bachelor’s degree of some kind and if they want a salary increase it requires at least two more years of graduate school before they can even think about entering the workplace. If people study only humanities for six of their most pivotal years of life, depending on their field of work, they may have a very small base of technical knowledge to utilize.
Ungar, S. J. (2010). The new liberal arts. In G. Graff, C. Birkenstein, & R. Durst (Eds.). “They say, I say”: The moves that matter in academic writing with readings. (2nd ed.). (pp. 190-197). New York: W. W. Norton. This article looks to prove that liberal arts education is just as valuable as “career education” because contrary to general belief, career education doesn’t guarantee high-paying jobs after they graduate.
“The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed.
Going into this Humanities class, I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t know what the Humanities were and how it would impact my education at all. I had taken a number of history classes in high school and in college before and expected the Humanities to flow with my history classes in a sense. In my previous history class’s topics such as wars, The Great Depression, assassinations, the settling of different parts of the world, slavery, witch-hunts, and the use of animals were discussed. I thought that the Humanities would fall somewhere on the line with history. I wasn’t wrong with this assumption, but I wasn’t right either. The Humanities, I have learned, is so much more than the history that surrounds what people did, acted like, made as art, ate, and learned. The Humanities made all the different interactions between people clear. People to people, people to land, people to art, people to animals, and many other interactions that people come across. This class opened my mind to everything that art is and can be and to how important is it to learn from the past, grow for...
...from high school with high hopes that college would add the finishing touches to my writing skills – I knew I still had flaws in my style, and I didn’t know how to fix them. And now here I am, aiming to become a successful novelist or screenwriter of some sort (as long as it allows my imagination to run wild).
In this moment in time, there is no assurance as to where writing will take me as I follow this pathless “woods.” However, I hope that at the end of my journey, this decision will make all the difference as well.
When I read The Road Not Taken, I thought right away of the choice I made in high school not to study foreign languages. In the poem, the speaker makes his choice in either fall or spring - when the woods are yellow. I see both these seasons as times of new beginnings. In spring, everything new is growing. In fall (at least for students) it's the start of a new school year. I made my choice one fall when a guidance director told me I was not "college material" and recommended that I drop my French class. September should have been a beginning, but I saw it as an end to my dream for college. It's only now that I can begin to think it was-in a way - a beginning, too.
“Don’t do that. You’ll never get a job.” Such was the response of one of my favorite teachers to the interest that I had voiced in history as a potential field of study. A teacher whose class a friend and I had enjoyed so much we had taken time out of a weekday afternoon to come visit her. Sure, my response contrasted pretty acutely with that of my friend who wanted to pursue a career in computational linguistics, but history is my genuine interest. In an environment that constantly peddles science and technology careers, it’s hard to love history and literature.
In pondering what my life will be like when I am finished with college, I have to consider the rapid life-changing events and choices that I am facing now at the age of 17. In a short span of time I have had to make a decision about my future career and, based on that decision, choose where I would go to college. I realize that I am in a crucial part of my life now, and that the commitments I make today will drastically affect my status ten years from now.
Today in most colleges in our country it is a very coming thing that most graduates have humanitarian classes before they earned their degree upon graduation. According to dalbert the Arthur and experienced student graduate of the ten Important Reasons to Include the Humanities in Your Preparation for a Scientific Career stated that “the reason why humanities classes in college is because it prepares you to fulfill your civic and cultural responsibilities what that means is that these classes help develop citizens in today’s society and not only that it also develops understanding about morals, ethical, political, and ideological forces.”(Dalbert) the second reason is humanities classes help students become familiar with their mind sets and