A rapidly diminishing selection of classes have appealed to me. I must filter through pages of course offerings and schedules before I can find one that excites my interest. This is in rather stark contrast to one year, one term, one week ago. Avant le deluge my perspective on the ORC had been completely different.
Before, I had been regularly nauseated by the anguish of course selection, term after term, the anxiety before registration, hopes towards the retrospective application of "prescient choice!" following upon the heals of "can I get in before enrollment closes?" Course descriptions littered, saturated the pages of the ORC, a dozen, maybe more, on each over-leaf. I sensed a teetering stone, barely containing its stores of energy, each fall then winter then spring tumbling down, shamelessly turning potential into kinetic, bouncing downwards, building momentum, resting only momentarily on a ledge, to wait but a few weeks to tumble again. Each little bounce could be the next great bound; heavens to he who misses just one. Or; those courses with stratospheric numerations, in their nondescription describing Edenic gardens of scholarly enquiry, the fabled "independent study", orchards of any variety of fruit from which to pick, and eat of; exotic and unfamiliar types and species, to taxonomy and then portray, taste by taste, the skin the flesh the core.
Dartmouth affirms "the existence within the College of the kind of responsible individualism that must ever be a part of education in a free, democratic society, and provide exceptional opportunity for self-education" (ORC, 112). Or; foreign tongues beckoning, beneficent sirens from afar, entreating the student's conspicuous desire for cosmopolitan education. The Off-Campus office, strategically allied with Career Services, disseminates reams of paper full of lists of places to go, alien cities towns villages whereat one might take additional courses in utter compliance with the mission statement of Dartmouth College. Once at the receiving university, abroad, the registration process opens up Aeolus' bag, blowing away from a land of only three choices back again to our island of frightening diversity of options, nameless obscurity of selection. Or; seminars, colloquy, lecture series changing quarterly, with new topics forecast and present realizations fading infinitely away into the academic past, into the memories of the few to have witnessed the manifestation of the syllabus. Or; to audit keeping tabs on classes already-in-progress, allowing for haphazard consideration of topics, free of any obligation, no money down, satisfaction guaranteed. Or; miniversity programs shouting out to one's dionysian impulses, boiling up through the apollonian of the daytime, with dusk a-fallin', time to get out of that head and into those bones.
The boundless selection used to exhilarate me. And on top of this free choice, dozens of other courses were recommended by the usual suspects. The rubric outlined in the Student Handbook implied distributive requirements, world history distributions, pre-requisites, required freshman courses. Major and minor sheets endorsed large departmental listings. Apologies to those who discover special majors, modified majors, program majors, or vacillating majors (e.g., Romantic Languages, Classics, Comparative Literature). The rumor-mill lathes thousands of board-feet of rough opinion and conjecture down into easily-transportable sound bites and top-ten lists, to be used to build up some temporary shanty, at least a roof, to protect against hailing questions of "What good classes are you taking this year?"
But no longer am I interested. In principle, sheer diversity has merit. The liberal arts expects variety in perspective to instill variety of perspective in the student. We always have other lives to live, as Thoreau said, regardless of how rewarding one path may be. Theoretically, it seems, the value of a course comes not so much from the topic of the class, but rather from being something totally different, a complete change of pace, a new lens through which to see the same old thing, the studio art for the historian, the chemistry for the creative writer.
But, in practice, ideals of multiplicity in disciplinary offerings seem meaningless. The ever-widening spectrum of classes comes to naught, for, essentially, the content or subject of the course has almost no causal relation to the pedagogical significance of the course. Neither the prolixity of the course's ORC description, its clever transcending of disciplinary boundaries, effusive recommendations, genius or radical ideas to be encountered within, a great book-list, nor an off-the-wall title makes much difference.
For those are not the things that make a class a viable use of your time, effort, money, and, most importantly, curiosity and developmental potential. Rather, it is only the professors, one's classmates, and one's own attitude and comport that does. This does not mean that only form and structure matter, whereas content does not. Likewise, this does not mean that it is useless to "acquire knowledge". Simply, the value of such knowledge cannot be determined by the ORC precis or any syllabus. Only through the degree of passion, charisma, eagerness, and enthusiasm of the humans involved in the class can whatever knowledge on the table become animated and valuable.
There is only a modest number of great classes on campus--these are the only ones one should take.
