Professor Aaron Hanlon\u2019s very first comment drew me in and sparked a lot of interesting considerations.\u00a0 This first comment was on the layout of our campus at Colby.\u00a0 Even though we are a liberal arts college, our campus is split into language and humanities buildings, science buildings, and social science buildings.<\/p>\n
The structure of our academic buildings is something that has struck me in the past.\u00a0 All of my closest friends here at Colby are majoring in different disciplines and, regardless of our busy schedules, I can usually guess where each will be throughout the week days based on their major.\u00a0 The one majoring in psychology has most of her classes in Davis; the one majoring in English and Philosophy has most of hers in Lovejoy or Miller; the one majoring in Econ is usually in Diamond; and most of my classes, as an STS and Biology double major, are either in the science buildings of Diamond.<\/p>\n
As freshman, my peers and I found ourselves going back and forth across campus attending classes in all different buildings.\u00a0 My schedule one year required me going from Mudd to Diamond to the third floor of Miller all with only 10 minutes in-between.\u00a0 However, as the years have gone by and we have reached our senior years, we find ourselves spending the majority of our time in our respective educational buildings.<\/p>\n
Not only does the structure of our campus confine certain people to certain buildings for classes, but it also plays a role in defining our social life at Colby.\u00a0 Where we take classes, who we take classes with, and where we study has a large impact on our Colby experience.\u00a0 These people that we take our classes with become our peers and the people we study with become our friends.\u00a0 Even the people we don\u2019t interact with but see in our respective academic buildings on a day to day become familiar to us, whereas the many of other students studying in other buildings remain strangers.<\/p>\n
I, thus, wonder if the structure of our campus juxtaposes our liberal arts values.\u00a0 Yes, we have distribution requirements that force students to take classes throughout campus, but the majority of our studies for the majority of disciplines are confined to certain areas, certain peers, certain professors, and certain study spaces.\u00a0 How are we as students supposed to truly diversify our intellectual pursuits and social interactions if we are confined to spaces with peers and professors interested in the same discipline?<\/p>\n
I also wonder if it\u2019s possible to break these niches.\u00a0 Would it make sense to force more interactions by randomizing class spaces? Would randomly distributing classes and professors even work to help diversify our interactions?<\/p>\n
Professor Hanlon\u2019s opening remark on the layout of our campus made me wonder about why our campus is set up in this way and how this layout affects our liberal arts experience here at Colby.\u00a0 Is this kind of organization necessary? Is it really affecting our experience? Should the layout be reconsidered?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professor Aaron Hanlon\u2019s very first comment drew me in and sparked a lot of interesting considerations.\u00a0 This first comment was on the layout of our campus at Colby.\u00a0 Even though we are a liberal arts college, our campus is split into language and humanities buildings, science buildings, and social science buildings. The structure of our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[377230],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}