Fall "Break"

“Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they set before them as their goal—such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

Today, I got some grief from some of my friends at UK about our Fall Break here at Transy, and while I have been taking it easier on myself than usual the past few days, I can tell you, this hasn’t been too much of a “break.” If there’s one thing you have to get used to at Transy, it’s having work on weekends, on breaks, and, well, always. Sound scary? Don’t worry. I came from a high school where I didn’t have to work, and I mean really work, for a whole lot. I could get away with not reading; I could start my papers the night before they were due, and I didn’t need to study much in order to do well. That changed the first day of class here at Transy. The professors have exceedingly high standards for our academic performance, but I feel like “that has made all the difference,” to quote Frost.

Because these professors have pushed me to what felt like my utter limits, I have learned not only to cope with a demanding schedule, but also to take pride in my academic achievements. No longer do I see school as something that comes easy, something just to get through. I now look forward to every class, to learning even more about fascinating subjects from professors whose passion for their subjects is unparalleled. Every grade is a personal challenge that I can be proud of when I meet my own academic standards. I no longer get inundated and burned out with the busy work that often haunts high school students. Instead, everything I have learned here, every class I have taken, has been incomparably valuable. It has significantly expanded the knowledge with which I can approach problems across the academic spectrum and in the “real world;” I knew the beauty of a Liberal Arts education when I brought up a concept from my Psychology class to explain something in my History class last semester.

I guess this is just to say that, as I lay here on the Monday of Fall Break with my British Literature spread before me dauntingly, I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else, even somewhere where I had an actual break. I know that not only will I probably enjoy this late 15^th century drama, Everyman (literature nerd, I know), but also I will most likely be able to use the knowledge I gain from it outside the realm of English, and even academia as a whole—and Transy is the reason I can do that.

Summer was a long enough break, anyhow. =)