It was the last day of class the fall of my freshman year. We listened to Dr. Gamble cover the last several documents in the Westerm Heritage Reader and briefly go over what to expect on this first final of our collegiate career. Class finished in the odd solemnity of completion, where we all knew that the reading was finished, the lectures were over, and that, in a few short days, even this arbitrary construction of a “class” would be gone. There were of course finals to contemplate, but even those had a certain novelty to them. My uncertainties were interrupted by a sudden squeal from one of my classmates announcing with some sadness that we were one eighth done with college.
At the time her reaction seemed a little premature. After all, we hadn’t even finished freshman year. But now, I stand two term papers and a few finals away from graduation, and I wonder if I should have had her reaction.
Hillsdale truly is a peculiar institution. For all of its flaws and idiosyncrasies, it offers something which to a great extent cannot be found elsewhere. Where else could you find a community of college students who have read Aristotle? Who have struggled through Dante? Who either love or hate the “Aeneid”? The Hillsdale core, in all of its iterations, aims to present a philosophical and intellectual history of western thought. Through the core, we read things which many people haven’t even heard of.
For me, that is the hardest part about going home. Within Hillsdale, one can become intellectually spoiled, used to presuming that others have the same sort of familiarity with the “Odyssey” or Dante or the the Lincoln-Douglas debates. This shared background colors the discussions that we as students have with each other, tinting the debates sponsored by student organizations.
If you ever watched Jay Leno’s man on the street, you know just how queer that is.
In many ways, a Hillsdale education is isolating. The academic world which surrounds us from September through May is a bubble, allowing for an intense shared scholastic experience. It is a polis formed around the pursuit of understanding the knowledge of particular principles. But at the same time, it is by nature temporary. There will come a point for every student to leave.
Some Ivy League schools give freshman talks about the experience of going home for that first winter break, I guess hoping to prepare students for a world of people fawning over the name of their school. While Hillsdale lacks the same degree of name recognition as Yale or Princeton, the same jarring occurs when one leaves. How does one maintain an intellectual life amidst a popular culture which has largely moved past the consideration of the higher things? In some ways, graduation is the transition from student to an informal teacher, wherein the task becomes explaining what you read here to those never had an introduction to such ideas.
It is a valid goal and worthy one, and yet, the life of the mind is more than this. The goal of education is to start a lifelong education. There is no graduation from contemplation. Rather, upon leaving Hillsdale, a different kind of hard work starts: finding others with whom to read and to consider.
