Today was Fine and Performing Arts Scholarship Day on our campus, and, as I was talking to prospective students about our college and what makes us so special, I realized that a lot of what I was saying was tied specifically into the fact that I go to a liberal arts college.
Often when I tell people where I go to school, I am met with a big "HUH?", and then am met with an even bigger "HUH?" when I tell them it is a liberal arts college. When people hear liberal arts, especially down here in the South, they tend to think of liberal in political terms. However, when we say "liberal arts," we do not mean liberal as in liberal politics; we mean liberal as in broad-concept learning, meaning that we value students having general knowledge that can apply to any field rather than having specific knowledge that applies to a specific field. It means that, while our majors are important, we realize that it is important for our students to have knowledge outside of their majors to make them well-rounded individuals.
I love going to a liberal arts college because I am more than a number there. I am an individual who has individual wants and needs, and I have professors and people on campus who are willing to help me achieve any goal I set for myself and who are willing to push me to strive for more. My classes are small; I know my professors, and they know me. I know that I can knock on their door and they will call me by my first name and spend time talking to me, even if it isn't specifically about their class -- or even about school at all. I know our cafeteria ladies, I know our cleaning staff, I know professors and students I have never been in a single class with. To me, a "big" class is one that has over fifteen-sixteen people in it; to me, seeing someone I have never seen before is an uncommon thing and, once I have seen them once, I know I will continue to see them again and again and that, eventually, I will get to know them by name.
I love going to a liberal arts college because I have a lot of options when it comes to the classes I take. I love that I get to take a lot of classes outside of my major and that they all count for something AND I can still graduate on time. Every class I take influences me in a different way, and I can always find away to apply the knowledge I gain from one class to another and to my life in general. The religion classes I take help me to better understand religious works of art and help me to better understand different religions and how they affect the world and the people around me, as well as helping me understand myself. My general education classes are open-ended; I get to take whichever classes I want to fulfill the requirements instead of having to take the same ones everyone takes. This, again, lends itself to the treatment of us as individuals in that we can choose more classes that cater to our personal interests so that, once we graduate, no two of us have ever had all of the same classes.
I love going to a liberal arts college because I know that I will be ready to take on anything I choose to when I leave. I know that, if I want to do art, I will have a chance to do art and, by the same token, I know that if I want to go into something outside of the art field, I will have opportunities to do that too because my education has prepared me for a wide range of careers and not one specific career. I know that my degree will be useful to me in any field I enter, and that the knowledge I have from being a liberal arts student will help me in any situation I find myself in because I have learned how to be a "creative problem solver" and I have learned that there is always a way to get something done, even if it isn't exactly orthodox or done by textbook rules.
I love going to a liberal arts college because it is a one-of-a-kind experience that is irreplaceable and that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
