The WWU Honors program has recently started running survival skills workshops for incoming freshmen. In planning follow-up events for this, the question came up of how best to articulate to new students the value of the program.

The courseload is very liberal-arts-focused; for many students, particularly STEM students, these courses can be expected to overlap very little (if at all) with their major. That’s a non-negligible number of extra credits, and few students can afford a delay in graduation, so lots of people in the program find themselves questioning, at one point or another, whether the program is worth seeing through to the end. It’s our role to try and make the case that it is.

Of course, it would be disingenuous to make this case if we did not ourselves believe it. For my part, I’m lucky because in spite of (because of?) being a Math/CS double major, I am convinced that the honors classes I’ve taken have on average been far more valuable than anything I’ve taken in either of my majors.

That’s not because I don’t like my majors – far from it. But computer science is close to being treated as a trade skill, and math’s “beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture” is only good for only certain parts of the mind. Both majors are great for what they are, but they are not a complete education. Similar things could be said for practically any other major: They all have gaps, and here’s a way to try and fill those gaps.

My first, informal attempt at articulating this argument went something like this:

Why stay with honors? Because we offer things you can’t get anywhere else. We have classes you can take as a freshman that are on par with upper-division classes in specialized majors. You can just say, “I want to learn about Russian literature this quarter”, or “I want to study film”, and nobody’s going to say, “tough shit, you’re a chem major.” If you don’t want to be an English major but you want to study great books, this is your chance. If you want to be in rooms full of clever people talking about any number of great authors you’d never heard of before, we’ve got you covered. We’ve got some of the best professors in the university. Great classes, full of great students, taught by great professors – what more do you fucking want?

I stand fully behind that sentiment, in spite of having been explicitly forbidden from ever putting it in such terms at formal events.

Perhaps it’s because this claim, despite being (I maintain) valid in what it says, doesn’t go far enough. After all, it’s not just that you can study these things if you want to. Yes, you can, and that’s amazing. The program offers stellar classes that students in most employable majors would have no other equivalent for. But that’s not all. It gets more personal.

It seems fair to claim that just about everyone would say they value self-improvement. I don’t think I know anyone who would say they don’t think it’s important to try to improve oneself. There are uncountably many ways to try to do this, and I don’t claim to have any special knowledge of them. One thing I do feel comfortable saying, though, is that it is good to be well-read. Inasmuch as one’s lifestyle can support it, you owe it to yourself to make time to read.

Ask 20 different people what college is about and you’ll get 20 different answers. For my part, I’d abstain from giving a straight answer, but I will say that if you’re in college but you aren’t here to learn, then you’ve made some questionable decisions. As in, like, what the fuck are you thinking? You do realize that this isn’t free, right? College is for learning, and anyone who’s in college ought to be there to learn. And, if you want to learn, why limit yourself? Fortune and bureaucracy are already too good at placing limits on people – don’t give them any help.

Someone once asked Paul Erdős why he found numbers to be beautiful. He replied that,

if you can’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

When faced with someone who “doesn’t really read”, I always think of this quote.

If you can’t see the value in studying some of the best surviving products of literal millennia of human culture then there’s really nothing I can say except that I am very sorry for you and I hope you grow out of that some day.

On the other hand, if you do see the value here then I also have just one thing to say, something which you likely already know: Whoever you can learn from, you should seek them out, go to them, and learn. If learning isn’t beautiful, nothing is.