Life in a Catholic College

Loras College is a four-year, Catholic Liberal Arts College. With a Catholic designation, many of the courses and activities are geared towards the Catholic faith and affect what students will take away from their four years. As a graduating senior in May of 2009, how I will act and think has been influenced by the Catholic faith on campus. The Catholic religion promotes a sense of community and reverence which many students will also take with them as they leave.

As a Catholic institution, there are many different courses that are offered about religion and ethics. A course on Catholicism is required in either their first or second year which offers a comparison between the Catholic religion and others. This course gives new students a perspective on what the college stands for and a chance to reflect on how they can be successful at a Catholic college. There is also an option to take a required ethics course with a focus on Catholic teachings. In addition to these required courses that are offered, there are also Masses in the chapel on campus and a campus ministry that students can participate in if they choose to do so. All of these options on campus allow for students to embrace the Catholic ideas on how people should live their lives. Students can learn that to live a Catholic life, they must take an active part in society and treat others as they wish to be treated. A college campus that does not offer courses in Catholicism or Catholic activities would not develop students that are taught to try and be active in their communities to the extent that Loras does. Catholic dogma stresses the importance of living and praying in a community and the environment of Loras College allows these significant aspects to be spread on to many students and lead to an overall betterment of society.

The strong Catholic influence that can be felt on campus also has a tendency to inhibit students in some areas that affect how they are prepared to live in society after graduation. As a private institution, the college can choose to invite speakers that wish to or limit the exposure of certain ideas to the students. Many of the speakers that are brought to campus do not talk about controversial issues within the Catholic Church. During my four years of attending Loras, I do not recall a person coming and talking about the pro-sides of abortion or contraception. There is very little mentioned on these issues outside of the classroom setting so students don’t become as educated on these controversial issues as they might in a public school environment. Some campus groups are also denied funding from Catholic groups due to what they work for or believe in. Even if the group works for something that is good for people and society, but some of the money may go to an area that is against Catholic teaching; funding is denied. I believe that the positives should be weighed against the negatives instead of a decision based solely on one small aspect.

At first thought, I did not see much influence of the Catholic environment on the science department where I take the majority of classes. However; after talking to a classmate on the issue, I have realized that the department is greatly affected by existing in a Catholic environment. In the chemistry department, students must complete a thesis project before graduation. However, a panel consisting of Catholic members of the college must approve any research before it can be performed. Topics such as evolution and birth control also must be taught carefully by professors. I think the main reason why I did not see these things right away is because I have only attended Catholic schools and I have not been exposed to a school that teaches solely about science. I have always personally compared Loras to ultra-conservative schools which has blocked my realization about the impact of Catholicism on the teaching of science. The fact that Loras is a Catholic college both helps and inhibits students after they leave and enter the real world. Overall, I would say that the positives and negatives cancel each other out and make Loras similar to a public school.

I will be performing the majority of my service at Saint Patrick's Catholic Church. Saint Patrick's organizes a weekly meal for the congregation every Wednesday and I will be helping to set-up, serve, and clean up for the meal. One of my main goals for this service project will be to interact with the people that I am working with as well as the people that attend the meal. In addition to working at Saint Patrick's every Wednesday, I will also be spending consecutive Saturdays in October helping clean up the Washington Neighborhood as well as helping to winterize homes. These two areas of service contrast each other well as I will be in a closed environment for one and out in the neighborhood for the other. I am looking forward to starting service in the coming week and continue it throughout the rest of the semester.

Beyond Loras College

I will be graduating from Loras College this coming May. I will have earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Biochemistry. I; like many of my other classmates, will not be heading directly into an occupation, but instead will enter into a graduate school to further my education. I plan on entering into a medical or osteopathic school where I will not be offering many of the things that I have learned at Loras College to others immediately. Instead, I will be expanding on what I have learned in the previous four years so that I will be able to offer even more valuable knowledge and experiences onto people in society. However, there are some things that I have learned at Loras which are unique and that I will be able to use to help others immediately after graduation from college and also medical school. Many of the classes that I will take in graduate school will focus solely on the body and its medical aspect. The liberal arts education that I will have for the rest of my life due to Loras College will enable me to better understand patients and people than a background composed solely of science courses. A moderately extensive knowledge in the humanities will hopefully allow me to better understand patients and enable me to effectively assess their needs and treat them.

There will be many different social issues that I will face in graduate school and in my career after entering the professional world. My first two years of medical school will be contained in the classroom setting, but the final two years will be completed in various hospitals. This environment will be similar to what I will be working in during residency and throughout the rest of my life. I will be helping patients from many different backgrounds and lifestyles. Many people that I meet will be completely unlike anyone whom I have met before and I will be forced to learn to interact with their uniqueness. I have lived in Iowa my entire life and if I move to another state or city to practice medicine then I will be unaware of local customs and will be forced to assimilate to a foreign way of life.

Despite the possibility of meeting people unlike anyone whom I have encountered before or living in an unknown city, I feel as though I am prepared to survive those challenges. I attended a small Catholic high school in Fort Madison, Iowa and was not exposed to many people of different backgrounds or lifestyles. Loras College is by no means a large school, but I feel as though I have met many different types of people that I could not have met in my hometown. I expect that I will continue to broaden my horizons in medical school and residency and will be prepared to be a doctor that can interact with any person by the time my career officially starts. I have often heard of physicians that have no ability to interact with patients and I will strive to be different from them. I feel that to be successful, a good doctor-patient relationship is vital. I am aware that I am currently not fully prepared to achieve these goals, but I have been making progress every year while I have been at Loras and this service experience will help in my progression.

Many of these social issues that I am sure that I will face as a doctor were experience by the narrator in The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. As I stated in previous paragraphs, the most noticeable issue that I will face in the future is the possibility of dealing with people from backgrounds that are different from my own. The narrator faced a similar predicament when arriving in New York City to look for a job. He had grown up as an African-American in the South when the Jim Crow Laws were in wide use. Upon arriving in New York where racial equality had a much better chance of occurring than any other place that he had previously been, he entered into a state of shock at the prospect of Caucasians and African-Americans living in harmony. The narrator was not at all prepared to deal with this situation and he was extremely confused by it. However, he was able to adapt quickly to the “improved” conditions. At first glance, it was hard for me to find any similarities between the narrator’s experiences and mine that I will encounter in the near future. However, I was easily able to find connections once I realized that I could one day be living in a “foreign” area as the narrator did.

Advantages of a Liberal Arts Education

As I mentioned in my initial post for this blog, I attend Loras College in Dubuque, IA. Loras is a four year liberal arts college. When I arrived at Loras College in the fall of 2005, I had very little idea about what it meant for the school to be classified as a liberal arts college. After over three years of attending Loras, I feel as though I have a clear idea about what it means to graduate from a liberal arts college. An institution that promotes a liberal arts education is focused on providing students with well-rounded knowledge. Large universities and trade schools often allow students to focus on only one discipline without taking courses in other areas. Liberal arts institutions allow students to broaden their horizons and take classes that will also help them in their areas of interest. I believe that the most common areas that the liberal arts focus on are the humanities and social sciences. These areas of studies promote the understanding of people and their history which is vital for any area of study.

The liberal arts are also important to the world outside of college. When many people enter the workforce and remain in the same position for many years they tend to lose knowledge about other things. People become experts in a small field while forgetting about others. A liberal arts perspective would say that it would be essential to maintain knowledge about general topics in addition to focusing on a given field. This would allow people to have commonalities with a large portion of the population and would also help them in their career or personally. Many people that have the ability to talk about a wide range of topics can relate well to others and are more likely to advance in their careers than someone who is so focused on a specific topic that they are unable to effectively communicate. Having a large background in general areas of interest also can add an outside perspective to ideas and help in assessing their feasibility or effectiveness.

Martha Nussbaum’s book; Cultivating Humanity, promotes the use of a liberal arts education in colleges today. Nussbaum bases nearly all of her arguments on the teachings of Socrates and his views on education. She believes that it is important for a liberal arts view on the world even outside of a college setting. “We have not produced truly free citizens in the Socratic sense unless we have produced people who can reason for themselves and argue well, who understand the difference between a logically valid and a logically invalid argument, who can distinguish between the logical form of an argument and the truth of its premises” (Nussbaum 35). This evidence shows that Nussbaum believes that for a person to be able to succeed in the world they must be able to understand concepts that are taught through a liberal arts education. Nussbaum argues that the most important concept that can be drawn from a liberal arts education and used in the world is logical analysis. This argument is based on the need to question life and not blindly follow instructions or advice that may not be in a person’s best interests. This holds true in the classroom setting where Nussbaum promotes the idea that students should constantly be questioning professors and never accept what they say as always being the truth.

Nussbaum admits that there are challenges to this Socratic way of teaching that she strongly promotes. She argues that there are two challenges to this promotion of student questioning. One is the conservative opposition. “This argument suspects that Socrates’ dedication to argument will subvert traditional values” (Nussbaum 37). People that make this argument would be in favor of a system where students don’t question professors. Often times these types of people are involved in religious affairs where questioning is often frowned upon. The second challenge comes from people who believe that not everyone is capable of logical thinking. This often includes women and minorities. Nussbaum believes that anyone is capable of logical thinking and can excel in the Socratic Method.

How does all of this talk on liberal arts and Socratic teaching connect to the service learning that I will be performing? I believe that a solid background in courses of the humanities and the social sciences will allow me to better connect to people. Learning about the people of the past and how they thought and interacted will allow me to understand what the needs of people that I will be helping are today. People have had the same basic needs throughout known history and by learning about those needs at a liberal arts college I will be able to apply what I have learned in my service works.

Wisdom Connection

The purpose of this post is to examine what wisdom is as I attempt to connect its definition to the service learning that I will be performing this fall. Every person has an idea about what the word wisdom means, but many people do not know what the definition truly is. The fact is, the definition of wisdom is so broad that it is unique to every individual. The prevailing idea of what a wise person looks like is an elderly man or woman who has experienced many things in his or her lifetime and is willing to share knowledge or recommendations to younger generations. In reality, wisdom is not contained to the elderly or experienced members of society. Every person possesses wisdom, even in the simplest form. Wisdom is the state of having knowledge or experiences and then applying them to everyday life. This definition allows every person in society regardless of age to possess wisdom. Wisdom is all around us in society today. By simply observing a single person or a community as a whole, we can increase our knowledge.

I have experienced over three years of classroom learning at Loras College, but I would not consider myself a wise man. I feel as though the breadth of my knowledge has increased since my first college experience in my MOI class. My MOI class was centered on the topic of Socrates and his trial and death. Much of the class focused on what the definition of justice really was and what it meant to be a wise person. I remember entering the class and not knowing what to expect from a college course and being unprepared for the complexity of the material. Answering questions in class was done just to be able to finish the course and I forgot much of the material soon afterwards. I did not possess the concept of reading material to understand and instead simply read to say that I had finished assignments. I read Plato’s “The Apology of Socrates” in that first college class and only remember that it was centered on Socrates’ trial and sentencing to death. At that early stage in my college career, I was unable to understand many of the concepts that Plato was trying to portray. Class discussions were filled with confusion as I was amazed at what other students were able to pull from the readings when I was barely able to understand the basic plot. After three years, I believe I have learned to look at the deeper meanings within literature and understand why works were written. Many of the honors classes that I have taken between these two classes have taught me to understand why authors wrote certain works throughout history and the overall message that they were trying to express. From this second reading I was able to pull from Socrates’ comments that the idea of wisdom was the main focus of the work. Socrates was considered by many to be the wisest man in society, yet he considered himself not to be wise. Socrates understood that men were inherently not as wise as they thought themselves to be and thus they were unable to utilize much of the wisdom that they did possess. I believe that the main argument to be taken from “The Apology of Socrates” is that wisdom is possessed by every person, but can only be considered wisdom if the person does not realize that they are being wise.

All of this discussion on wisdom connects to the service that I will be performing in the Washington Neighborhood. I will be spreading the knowledge that I have gained at Loras College onto others. I will also be gaining knowledge from the people I will be working with because they will be spreading their wisdom onto me. I will not only have the chance to apply what I have learned while completing my undergraduate degree; I will also be gaining knowledge that I would have never gained if I was contained in a classroom environment. The intake of knowledge from the experiences of others is a constant process in all societies and a main reason for the betterment of cultures and countries that is continually taking place.