The Four Hour Lecture

This past Friday we held a whaling panel during our regularly scheduled policy class. The whaling panel is a Williams-Mystic tradition, where all of our professors give short lectures in regards to how whales connect with their area of expertise.

My literature professor discussed whales in early texts, my science professors discussed the evolution and distribution of whales today, my history professor lectured on the history of whaling in the Americas, and my policy professor led a discussion on the whaling ban and why we as a society valued whales so much.

This was a four hour class. Usually, I would not be able to sit in the same seat for that long, listening to a lecture on one topic. However, this was one of my favorite class periods thus far. Hearing all of my professors talk about whales in their different subjects reaffirmed my decision to attend this program. No problem is ever solved from looking at just one angle, and this whaling panel was the perfect example of how we need to look at things from an interdisciplinary view in order to even try to get a full understanding of it.