This semester, I will finally finish my language requirement — an ongoing trial that has caused many stressful moments of scheduling on SIS and left me struggling to grasp why in the world we have to take classes totally unrelated to our majors within the College. I am an English major. Why, why, why am I taking French? And while it will be pure bliss to have it completed, I don’t think I’m the only one who has ever become frustrated trying to fill standards that may seem irrelevant or just difficult to satisfy.
I understand the idea behind area requirements. The College is seeking to produce the most well-rounded students by requiring us to obtain a breadth of knowledge. They want to create more holistically-educated Hoos by having us dip our toes in a little bit of everything. While the actual manifestation of this idea is annoying, I’m realizing it’s not at all foreign to us as University students. In many ways I think we actually have very similar standards for ourselves outside of our academics — we have created “area requirements” for our personal lives that we seek to fill.
I see it in my own life and the lives of people around me. There are so many categories — relationships, community service, real world experience and just plain fun — which I find myself working tirelessly to fill and maintain. I think we believe that the more things we can be involved in and be a part of, the more whole we will feel. It’s an idea that permeates U.Va. and really simply life in general. We think we will be our happiest, most true self if we can just have and handle the many.
It’s almost as if our lives are dressers. The way to have the best, most successful, most likely to get hired dresser is to have the most drawers — to be able to hold the most and widest collection of things, ever expanding our variety and capacity. And we don’t stop there. Those drawers must be full. They must be hard to even shut due to their pure volume. Things need to fit, but barely.
It’s interesting to think about the intention behind our behavior. What’s funny is that our thinking isn’t entirely coherent. If our end goal is to be whole, why are we trying to meet that end by breaking our lives into as many segments as we can? Could it be that instead of being 100 things, we were meant to be one thing? It’s obvious we long for completion — the language of wholeness is everywhere in our descriptions of what we really want in a job, in a relationship and in life.
The University thinks all classes we take will inform us as students and piece together who we are, when what we really desire is for who we are as a student to inform the decisions of which classes to take. They want to start with the many classes and work towards the one student they want us to be, while we want to start with the one student we are and fill in our classes based on that knowledge. What if we were bold and lived our lives with the same ideology we would use to create our dream class schedule? What if we stopped splitting our lives up and instead lived out of one purpose, lived as one whole person?
I have taken required classes that I am very thankful I was forced to take. There are a few classes that have undoubtedly changed the way I think for the best. It’s not that we can’t stumble upon something that helps shape us, but we should think critically about spreading ourselves thin in all different directions in order to create some ideal version of a perfect student or person.
We are left to decide if it’s all the things we do that should make us who we are, or if it’s who we are that should inform everything we do. I’m afraid if we’re looking for everything we do to give us meaning, it may not. Maybe instead it’s who we are that gives everything we do significance.
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