Originally published on 2024-02-28

         I had a meeting today with a professor in the hopes that I could forge some sort of relationship with him in the hopes that he would sponsor my independent major in the future. He is quite the typical humanities based academic and is very shy and reserved in general; he did not respond to my first several emails.  Last week I tracked him down by finding his class times on ELC and spoke to him in person, I seemed to have scared him at the time but after a few more emails to follow the in person surprise he invited me to his office to speak. We spoke for around an hour today about the books he has written, his continued research, academia in general, Tolkien's Catholicism, his friend CS Lewis and the very nature of stories themselves.   By the end I had won him over and he volunteered to help me in any way I might need in the future and so I secured him as a mentor and sponsor to have for the future. 

        This is all in the process of creating my own interdisciplinary studies degree. This involves taking classes in three or more departments of the college of arts and sciences and then writing a 30 page senior thesis with the correspondence of your mentor supervisors. 

        Now that I have a mentor in support of my studies it is time for me to clarify what it is i want to study. My interests are wide ranging and may only seem generally connected; I am interested in History, English, Philosophy, Religion and Political Science.  Each of these teaches about who and what humans are, they teach us how the world works and how we should understand and comprehend it. Primarily, I do believe the purpose of education should be for coming to see and understand the world. In doing so we come to shape ourselves and our minds, in the Aristotelian sense education is therefore the shaping of the soul. Education is not mere for habilitation; the development of competence in certain tasks is only evidence of the merits of education and is not the merit itself. Surely someone well read, thoughtful and understanding will be a competent speaker, persuader or leader but those are mere surface level rewards. The true value of education is that it has the potential to make us more of who we are; it has the ability to make us more of who we are meant to be. 

        I am interested in the way in which humans are aesthetic creatures. Why do we love stories? Why would Jesus speak in parables and not in doctrine, and what sort of influence do these stories have on us and our cultures?  Some more specific questions include in what way do we mythologize history?  What do a culture's myths say about it and how do they shape it?  What are the American myths and what do they say about us? In what sense does or storytelling nature influence politics?  To what extent does the divine influence seep into our most central stories? How central are "savior" figures to storytelling universally?  How do seemingly unreligious stories mirror the divine? What are some examples of this sort of typology?  In what sense are spiritual stories the groundwork for the rest of stories?  What are heroes and what do they mean to us? Who are American heroes and can we even have them any more?  To what extent does our postmodern deconstructivist worldview eliminate heroes and at what cost does that come?  Finally, on the subject of stories and reality; to what extent do we need narratives to make sense of life, the universe and everything?  This of course all relies upon the principle that life has meaning and we ought to make sense of it. 

I look forward to this endeavor and will share my works and findings on this page. I look forward to this grand adventure.