Thoughts from Places: Old Main, Plato's Conspiracy, and Lincoln's Ass

Old Main

Hey guys, today I want to talk about my favorite building on Knox College campus and whatever else happens to pop into my head.

Old Main is my favorite building, with a close second being the library, both buildings where history fuses with the present. It's lucky that I like the building so much because at least 90 percent of my classes have taken place there. It houses the philosophy, history, and English departments which are pretty much all of the classes I've taken at Knox.

For a long time, I could not explain why I liked Old Main so much. I mean the architecture is nice, which I will come back to in a second, and every time I enter the building it feels like stepping into a weird time-locked world where the 1800s are somehow mixed seamlessly with modern technology, but I did not get it. Nothing really clicked in my mind until I took Ethics class with Professor Factor.

This is the Common Room in Old Main.

Professor Factor told us the history of the building and more about its architecture than I could have ever known. He told us about the Divine Proportion, also called the Golden Ratio, which Plato studied, and how it had been built into the building's every nook and cranny as a pagan rebellion against the Christian ministers who had commissioned the building of the structure.

The Divine Proportion is kind of difficult to explain. Mathematically it is an irrational number like Pi. It is about 1.6. For more information about the Divine Proportion go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

When it is used in architecture, the Divine Proportion signifies that the Divine is watching over that building and its power, the power of creation, is infused into it. I don't know about that, but I am a spiritual person and something about that statement clicked within me. For some reason, when I am within Old Main's walls I feel the creative juices flow stronger than at any other time. I could sit in that building and write for hours and be happy. I have done just that, in fact. I often wonder why that is the case. I guess that it does not matter so much as long as I'm happy creating there, but I want to know why. I'm a philosophy major, it's in my nature to question everything.

Some may say that I am feeling God's creative power run through me. I'm not Christian, but like I said I am very spiritual. I can feel the power that exists in that building, but it could be anything. Maybe the lesson we are meant to learn is that it doesn't matter what the thing that gives us that power is, only that it does. It makes us believe in ourselves more than we might normally because we think that there is some great force watching over us and lending us its creative energy. Whether you believe that force is God, the universe, or any other god or spirit from any age, that is okay. They are all equal. They all give us a power far greater than most people realize. They give us strength in faith. Not faith in some great power beyond us, but a power within ourselves, our souls. As long as we have faith in ourselves, we can accomplish great things. It is this that the Powers that Be gives, in whatever form they take in your mind, and for that I thank them.

The holy light of Plato's Good bathing Old Main.

Personally, I do like the idea of Plato's spirit guarding the entrance to Old Main like a bouncer to a club. That makes me smile. I'm just saying, it could happen.













The last thing I want to mention, on a much less serious note, is Lincoln's chair (see picture below). That chair is a piece of pride for our college. It is a testament to our history as an important institution in America. President Abe Lincoln actually used that chair when he visited Knox College after he climbed through the window and onto the stage outside just to show up his debate opponent who walked out the front door.

That chair also has seen more action since the mid 1800s than Genghis Khan! Okay, I may be exaggerating, but for some reason that chair seems to be a very common place for students to get some swoodilypoopin' fun on. More evidence that history is cool, kids.

American Education system (abridged)

Simply put, the American education system is a convoluted mess, but I will try my best to give a brief overview of the entire system and then talk a bit about Knox, the college I go to.

Okay, kids start going to school at ages three to five. Three and four year olds go to pre-school and five year olds go to kindergarten. Many kids only go to one year of pre-school; you don't have to go until you are four. Kindergarten is mostly for learning to read and write.

Elementary school varies from place to place. My school system has 1st-3rd graders in the elementary school and 4th-6th graders in a different school, the upper elementary school. Then Middle school is 7th and 8th grade and high school is 9th-12th grades. Wide numbers of subjects are covered in these years, but in general it's all to teach kids how to pass tests by memorization rather than actually live in the real world. That's a major generalization that obviously has many examples to the contrary, but tests are used as a check to make sure you have learned something instead of applying it to a real world practical situation usually. This depends on the school and teachers though. Other than that, kids take numerous standized tests, some of which do nothing, others determine how much funding your school gets with higher scores on average gives higher funding from the government, and others determine the kids' entire future like the SAT and ACT which are taken in the spring of junior year and can be taken again in the fall of senior year (11th and 12 grades). If you don't score well on those, then you likely won't get into a good college or won't get into one at all, your grades matter too, but for some reason a ton of schools put a TON of importance on these two tests.

Now here's where it gets a bit messy. We have several kinds of schools here. There's public schools, which most kids go to, that are funded by the states. Then there's private schools which are for profit corporations basically and like colleges they have tuition fees (and can be very, very expensive), room and board fees, and the like. They often have the stereotype of being for snobby, rich kids types, but that's not necessarily true. You can get into one, and you normally have to apply to get in, based on merit. Then there are religious schools, mostly Catholic schools which are like private schools in that they aren't run by the government. They are run by the Catholic church and the religious leaders of that specific area. They teach a much more religiously integrated curriculum, which is supposed to be illegal for public schools, separation of church and state, but that doesn't always stop religious politicians from claiming that since evolution is a "theory" that creationism should be considered a scientific theory and taught in public schools, but I digress.

Colleges, lots of fun stuff here. They come in all varieties and price levels. They go from the two year community colleges that are local and relatively inexpensive that are good from lower income families and are a pathway to getting into a four year college or university (there's a difference between them, confusing, I know but I will get back to them in a second), but they are often looked down upon as not as good education wise. Again depends on the school. Colleges and universities, the difference between them is universities have graduate programs for getting your Masters in a certain subject and colleges don't. They only have an undergraduate program, like my school, Knox College. Colleges and universities can be either public or private. Public schools are typically cheaper than private schools, which are run like a corporation. Private schools can get extremely expensive. According to the Huffington Post, the most expensive private university in the US is Columbia University at $45,290 per year for four years not including if you stay for their graduate program! Yikes!

Colleges typically are known as having excellent specific departments. For example, Harvard Law. Knox is a liberal arts school, meaning that it has strong art, English, humanities, philosophy and social science programs. I actually chose Knox because of its creative writing program. I took some creative writing classes and ended up changing to philosophy. You have to meet certain requirements to finish your major and minor (the areas you took the majority of your class). You also have to meet other requirements depending on the school such as Knox has an experiential learning requirement and a diversity requirement on top of the general minimum credits you have to take in math and science and other basic subjects. I took astronomy, which knocked out two birds with one stone and gave me a math and science credit, so I haven’t had to take another math or science again, and won’t need to.

After I graduate I could enter the job market, or I could go on and go to another school to get my Masters and even try to get a PhD and become a doctor.

I think that’s the basics. I probably left out a ton of important information, so if you have questions ask and I will try my best to answer them.

Edit: After Sarah's questions about the difference between colleges and universities, I thought I would edit in my answer to her questions in, just in case.

You get a Bachelor's degree in the subject you majored and minored in when you graduate from a college, same with graduating from a university. The Bachelor's degree comes from graduating an undergraduate program (the first four years at a college or university).

You don't need to go to college first to go to a university. They both have four year undergraduate programs. A university is a college in the same way that a young adult book is a book, all young adult books are books, but not all books are in the young adult genre. All universities are colleges, but not all colleges are universities. If you go to a college for the first four years you can apply to a university to go an additional two years to get your Master's degree on top of your Bachelor's degree, but you can choose to go to a university for the first four years instead.

Hi! (Matthew's Introductory post)

Hey everybody!

My name is Matthew (or Matt, that’s what my friends call me, so you can call me Matt J) and I’m 21 years old. I’m from New Hampshire in the United States, but most of my high school years my family and I lived on a military base on Kwajalein, an island in the Marshall Islands. We’re not a military family my dad just got a job out there. If you have no clue where that the Marshall Islands are, they’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean near the Equator about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. My family moved back to the US about a year and a half ago.

Right now, I’m a student at Knox College in the state of Illinois. I’m in my third year of college, junior year, and I’m studying philosophy primarily with a side focus on history and religious studies. I’ve also taken creative writing classes.

Why study philosophy, history and religious studies? I love to think and imagine. I enjoy thinking about philosophical issues and how they relate to ethics, politics, history and religious beliefs. Knox is also a small school and I really love it.

I’m a writer. I hope to become an author someday (John Green is a huge inspiration to me). I’m currently working on a fantasy novel/series about a boy named Aaron and his sister Katrina that is based heavily on the Norse myth of Ragnarok, but it’s still my own interpretation and it’s not a carbon copy of the original myth. I also have tons of other ideas I want to work on. Haha.

I also run another blog, probably not as faithfully as I should, but anyway… if you want to look at that go here: http://dmmaster42.wordpress.com/ . I wrote a review of The Fault in Our Stars which you might particularly enjoy.

Some of the things I like to do when I’m not thinking about or talking/debating about philosophy with friends or writing: Watching online videos: Vlogbrothers and Yugioh the Abridged series are my two favorites, but Scishow, Crashcourse, and Hankgames are right up there as well. I read a lot, mostly fantasy and sci-fi but I do read other genres as well. I loved The Fault in Our Stars of course. I watch the news a lot but I also love a lot of TV shows and movies. I’m obsessed with Doctor Who and Merlin! I listen to music a lot while I work (lots of Hank Green songs of course!). I play video games. I also do a lot of role-playing, mostly D&D probably my favorite activity apart from writing. Other than that I love just spending time with my friends and girlfriend, who is also a nerdfighter (yay for nerdfighterlike!).

Things I dislike: Anything to do with increasing world-suck, serious arguments and tension, and rap.

Random facts about me: I’m ginger and left-handed.

I think that’s pretty much it about me for now. Welcome to this new blog! I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to see it grow and get the chance to get to know you and lots more nerdfighters. So have a great day and, as always, DFTBA!

Matthew