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By Arsh Haque, Class of 2015
A division exists in education: teaching how to think and
what to think. This pattern of learning was brought to my attention in a Liberal Education seminar my freshman
year and allows me to articulate the unique relationship I have since shared
with the McConnell Center. By instructing how to creatively and morally think,
the program has fundamentally supported my substantive growth as a person.
Adopting a nearly Socratic persona, I was exposed from the
beginning to an academic culture that focused less on answers and more on
questions. I recall during the aforementioned seminar of frustratingly
criticizing a text underlining the importance of personal virtue, “But the text
doesn’t tell you what a good person
is!” The response I was given echoed an old school of thought: read good books,
strengthen your resolve in what is good, and achieve it. I have come to
understand that the purpose of that seminar was to tell us what is good than to
teach us how to find out for ourselves. Striking a chord between intellectual
maturity and child-like curiosity, by being a scholar I was expected to seek
deeper understanding by reading, thinking, and questioning. Moreover, this
process was more complicated than I anticipated. Rationale was not the only way
to think – moral, emotional, spiritual, and pragmatic venues of thought were
integral to attaining some abstraction of truth. That is not to say, however,
that the opportunities limit themselves to explaining this process, rather most
of them expose one to the array of possible answers that exist.
The conjunction of exposure with process establishes the
cornerstone of my growth. I came into the program a headstrong youth centered
singularly on success and becoming a physician. My reasoning was shallow, but
my ambition held substantial girth in a culture that values 5-year-plans and a
corporate-management life-style. The Center, despite some preconceived
expectations, did not tell me I was on the wrong path. Rather, it caused me to
deliberate on questions I had until then ignored. By what standard do I hold my
life? How do I measure my morals? How do I see the human condition?
Particularly, it forced me to reconcile with the Platonic query: is it right? The
answer to this simple question is not always evident. Unfortunately, in the
case of my career, I had always acknowledged virtue as an irrelevant factor in
my decision-making. Driven by a desire to hold onto tradition, I attempted to
ignore this acknowledgment
At this point I was serendipitously introduced to Moot
Court. Interested by the complex convoluted thought processes necessary for the
activity, I at first considered this no more than a for-fun pastime because I
had no law-affiliated intentions in my career. Over time, however, I unintentionally
began spending more time on practice than I did on obligations associated with
my medical scholarship. The duality of switching from conservative to liberal
Constitutional interpretations to make legal arguments fascinated me. With the
recently developed comprehension that I operated on an empirical moral compass,
I made the striking and frightening realization that becoming a lawyer was what
I considered right. Ironically, a Platonic question had led me to functional
sophistry.
Terrified at the prospect of such dynamic change, I sought
counsel and advice from mentors that the program had provided: a mandated
political science professor, my Moot Court coach, and the director. Again –
these parties did not tell me what to do, but instead answered my questions and
asked ones of their own. I explored the pragmatic realm of a poor job market,
my personal capabilities, and the philosophical applications of virtue. Leading
me to a conclusion I knew on a yet-acknowledged level, they provided me with
the foundation to confidently pursue a field I not only believed would make me
happy, but considered moral.
Although with the appearance of an irrelevant tangent, the
previous anecdote exemplifies a trend that pervaded all my experiences with the
program. I was given seemingly innumerable questions, answers, and individuals
with expertise in the fields in the forms of classes, lectures, and seminars. I
realize now that my duty as a scholar is not to become an erudite or even to
absorb the totality of what is offered. I the case of my career, I read the
material, I deliberated, and I curiously asked, like a child, those questions
which naturally piqued my interest. In this manner, I believe it led me into
selecting the right questions, stumbling upon good answers, and deliberating on
them with the help of individuals who had become mentors so that they could
translate into action.
The program does not breed a cohesive mass of like-minded
scholars, however. The process of deliberate and molding thought reflects the
individualities of the scholars to reflect in dramatically diverse ways. Some
undergo a transformative change from how they thought coming in, whereas others
reaffirm their beliefs and gain a more profound understanding of them. Exposure
to this diversity has been instrumental in the aforementioned growth. The
program has provided me with an intellectually safe and comfortable arena to
grow and continues to do so. The staff and colleagues I have at the Center do
not seem to mind the strange quirks in my habits or thoughts, instead content
at the fact that I think and often happy to see a new perspective.
The program is not one of answers. It is one of questions. A
career does not define one’s life, but how one chooses it can be insightful. Regardless
of whether my life falls into law, I have no doubt that I will lead a life that
I reflect on as right. The way I make decisions, the way I value things, was
and continues to be put under constructive scrutiny. There is no question that
what I think has drastically changed since freshman year, and is likely to
change again. But my teaching me how to think, the program has assured me the
quality of what I will come to think.
Arsh Haque, of Elizabethtown, Ky., is a sophomore political science major at the University of Louisville.