Please do try to do it all . . .
So many things to do. Far from having to worry about boredom, as a TCU student you will be faced with a dizzying array of activities. Find a student organization and join it! Put all of your fraternity or sorority activities on your calendar so you don’t forget anything. Go to class. Friday evening time to hang out with your friends. Do your laundry. Prepare for class. Work out. Get a ticket for this weekend’s football game. Update Facebook regularly.
What’s missing from this list is something that high school rarely prepares you to think about. You already pretty much know about student groups and classes and everyone has been warning you about the need to remember to do your laundry before you run out of you-know-what. But college is not high school and here is one notable difference.
The TCU campus community presents us all with a breathtaking set of opportunities for outside-the-curriculum intellectual enrichment. Most every week you could—if you so chose—go to a lecture four nights of the week, from Monday through Thursday. Departments schedule Green Chair visiting professors. One faculty member invites a colleague from another institution to give a talk. Or one of the TCU colleges, such as AddRan my college, hosts a special lecture featuring one of its own faculty members. I highly recommend you keep Wednesday evenings open for Kinomonda, where food and world cinema meet a TCU/Fort Worth audience!
My field is Christian history. Over the last two years I have been to special talks on a wide range of topics: a rhino conservation program in South Africa, animals and consciousness, Shirley Chisholm the first black woman to run for president, fair trade issues in the clothing industry, the economics of philanthropy, creativity, Pope Francis (a topic close to my area of study), the people of Pakistan, Jewish contributions to Broadway, Jared Diamond on what we can learn from traditional societies, Muslims in America, the life of a National Geographic photographer, reformist Islam in Iran. (I could make an equally long list of lectures I posted to my calendar but could not, at the time, get myself to.)
Sometimes departments and faculty will bribe students into showing up for such lectures with the promise of extra credit. Feel free to take the offer of EC when it is presented to you. But, for goodness’ sake, surprise yourself (and maybe some of your high school teachers) by showing up at a talk that does not, on first glance, seem to intersect with your previously demonstrated interests. Maybe one of your professors has mentioned it in class. Or you saw an email about it. (Don’t laugh; that could happen.) Maybe you glimpsed a poster on it as you passed through the BLUU. Perhaps a friend has indicated they’re going (for extra credit in their class). Offer to go along. You won’t be required to take notes or swipe your card at the Purple People Counter. You’re just along for the ride. Oh, and for the intellectual stimulation.
I will admit that I have on rare occasion been disappointed when a talk turned out not to be very interesting to me or was poorly delivered. This has been actually quite infrequent. However, there has never yet been the event from which I learn nothing. If you keep your ears and your mind open, you might have the same experience.
In Fall 2015 the Religion Department sponsored or co-sponsored lectures by Dr. Vincent Wimbush, distinguished scholar of New Testament and African-American religion, and Dr. Jonathan Walton, social ethicist and current Pusey minister at Harvard Chapel. Two months later a student I did not know addressed me familiarly; he had heard me introduce Dr. Walton. I still don’t know that student, but just thinking about him makes me smile. His is a great example of what we mean when we say that not all learning happens in a classroom.
So, get out there and do it all. OK. Let’s be reasonable. Do a lot of listening to special talks. I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
Dr. Nadia Lahutsky is the Chair of the Department of Religion. She teaches courses in World Religions, Christian Traditions, Contemporary Catholicism, and Women in Religion.
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