A Blog on McConnell Center Life

“You’re doing what?” Her voice was incredulous, steeped in equal parts wonder, shock and just a little bit of playful derision. I still remember the way her smile looked, a splotch of mockery and a dab of pity. I knew what it sounded like. Jared Thomas - Class of 2020 It was just the latest in a long line of projects designed to “take my mind off things” or “give me a new perspective.” Inevitably, it would end up rotting in the trash pile of a million other initiatives, ideas and idiosyncrasies just like everything else some younger iteration of me had tried and failed at. After all,I wasn’t a musician. Far from it--I could barely scratch out Vance Joy’s “ Riptide ” on an old Ukulele I rented a few years back that I kept for so long that they gifted it to me out of incredulity at my stubborn determination to be aggressively mediocre. I hadn’t picked up my chipped and cracked guitar with the faded wooden finish since my eighth birthday, the first time I swore up and down th...

Ever since I was in elementary school, I have yearned to become a polyglot.   From sixth grade onwards I eagerly studied Spanish, assuming my love of languages would remain confined to learning already-existing languages.   About four years ago, however, my interest in languages took a dramatic turn.   For in June 2013, I began to write a novel which I had been contemplating for months.   As my story grew in scope, I thought one of the countries in the work should have its own language to make the novel more realistic.   Thus, that year I began to invent words for my new language.   I derived many of these words from English, Spanish, and other languages, but I devised many other words from scratch.   In this early stage of language creation, I had not learned about linguistics, nor had I laid out a precise range of the sounds that would be present in my language.   Working in an ad hoc manner and without firm rules for my language’s grammar, I d...

We need more engineers, the politicians tell us. How can our French literature majors compete with the myriad of STEM majors from China, India, and other emerging powers? The future of our economy depends on a technically educated workforce, they contend. Eric Bush - Class of 2020 This argument makes sense and a year ago I would have been inclined to believe it. During my senior year of high school, I chose to major in finance largely due to the subject’s practicality. But after a year of college, while I enjoy my business courses, I’ve realized that my education would be severely lacking without the liberal arts curriculum I study as a McConnell Scholar. The study of the liberal arts – exposing oneself to a wide variety of disciplines and ideas – may not train students to perform specific tasks. It does something much more important; it teaches students how to think critically and how to solve problems. “Education is what’s left when the facts are gone,” I heard someone sa...

Alice stumbled into the rabbit hole; I jumped. For the next four years, I will be a student of the University of Louisville. As you know, one cannot simply reverse gravity and shoot out of a rabbit hole, so here I am falling, falling, falling… For the most part, I am content with this reality. I can pursue my academic interests and bask in the excitement of living in a new city for the next four years, but part of me questions if I made the right decision. Jasmyne Post - Class of 2021 I jumped into the abyss in the middle of a war. Our nation is more socially and politically divided than it has been in decades and I would like nothing more than to be a bricklayer in the mission to bridge the ever-growing gaps in our society. However, like I said, I am busy right now with falling. My class schedule keeps me busy and I am constantly attending meetings for extracurricular activities and most days it seems that my only breaks come in my dreams. My dedication to being a model stude...