In a weeks time, my first quarter in college will conclude. As this quarter comes to a close, I find myself reminiscing of the time I have spent in college, all the people I’ve met, all the things I did, and all the things I learned. Throughout the quarter, I have grown intellectually thanks to my classes.

In Human Core, the theme of Empires and their Ruins had been very intriguing since I already knew a lot about empires and I was interested in learning more about the ruins left behind by those Empires. The course started out a little rough since I was still getting used to my classes and I had to read Said’s Orientalism and the Politics of Knowledge which were a bit difficult to understand at first. The quarter got really interesting when we started to learn about the Roman Empire and read Virgil’s The Aeneid. I grew up learning about Greek and Roman history and mythology because I found it very interesting. Seeing how a large part of the quarter was on my favorite topic brought me joy. The Aeneid was about the construction of a Roman hero who would plant the seed to the founding of Rome. The new stuff that I learned was the difference between a Greek and Roman hero.

The most mind-blowing reading I did was learning about Rousseau’s philosophy. The Basic Political Writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau essentially stated that mankind corrupts its connection to virtue and nature due to the arts and sciences, hence the reason why Rome fell after being culturally dominated by those it physically dominated. This was a very interesting philosophy because, to be honest, everybody in their teen years begin to question the use of school if the majority of knowledge learned has nothing to do with our survival. Rousseau takes it one step further and applies it to national conflicts and discourse for the sole purpose of mocking the enlightened philosophers who utilize the arts and sciences for their beliefs.

After Rousseau and the other philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Volney, we began to read Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee which is about the interactions between a foreign and powerful empire and native people. It deals with the struggle with being in the middle of the two cultures through its protagonist. This reading, along with the movie The Revenant, the Borderlands theory, and the reading by Zitkala-Sa made the closing of the quarter still educational and interesting.

As a future humanities major student, I find learning about all of these topics extremely important. The connections we had to make between each reading created this huge interconnected web of ideas that will prove to be useful when I begin focusing on my major. The best part about taking this course is the fact that now that I know about the elements that make a Roman hero, the reasons why empires rise and fall, enlightenment philosophies, and the Borderlands, I can now apply it to things I experience in the future. This knowledge could be applied to the work I do in the future or even in my daily life. This knowledge has increased my understanding of the arts and how humanity works as a whole.

Works citied:

Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Basic Political Writings.

Virgil. The Aeneid.