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| Taryn Mahanes |
Every year, the new freshman class at the McConnell Center is asked to participate in a seminar titled, “A Liberal Education.” This term has been thrown around a lot in the Center as well as on this blog, but it is something that is essential to this program and what it does for the students in it.
A liberal education is one that students take into their own hands. Rather than getting an education in order to seek a degree, liberal learners choose to become a well-rounded person by educating themselves in and outside the classroom. As you know, the McConnell Scholars Program strives to give students an opportunity to explore a variety of different topics outside the classroom setting and provides us with speakers and educators with whom we would normally not be familiar. The message of the “Liberal Education” seminar is that education is both a pleasure and responsibility that should not be taken for granted.
As a senior in the program, it was important for me to take advantage of the offering of this program for upperclassmen. The liberal learning seminar my freshman year was the most influential I attended, so much so that a changed my major as a result. The striking question asked in that lecture three years ago that made all the difference to my education was, “If you knew that you would never be able to use your college degree for a career, would you still be studying what you are now?"
This question made me realize that my one-track-mind toward law school was not the most valuable use of my time. My classes were not making me happy, and because of that, I wasn’t learning anything. Looking back at our college careers, we came to the realization that all of the real education being done was not usually in the classroom, but something we had to take responsibility for and go beyond our school assignments. According to the articles we read for the seminar, the first steps in creating your liberal education is by developing a personal library. Russell Kirk, in “The Ethical Purpose of Literary Studies,” says the following books should be included:
- Huckleberry Finn
- The Scarlet Letter
- The Turn of the Screw
- The Heart of Darkness
- The Death of Ivan Illych
- The Metamorphosis
- The Stranger
- The Invisible Man
- “The Yellow Wallpaper”
- “The Barn Burning”
- “Dry September”
- The Great Gatsby
Taryn Mahanes, of Oldham County, Ky., is a senior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is double majoring in English and humanities with minors in political science and Spanish.