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"Liberal education should give the student the sense that learning must and can be both synoptic and precise."

"Liberal education requires that the student's whole life be radically changed by it, that what he learns may affect his action, his taste, his choices, that no previous attachment be immune to examination and hence re-evaluation.  Liberal education puts everything at risk and requires students who are able to risk everything."

-Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind


I find it rather surprising that I started this blog years ago in high school as a way to exhibit the things I was learning.  To be honest it was really to divert the attention of the teacher from the fact that I was only playing games in another window (alt + tab, am I right?).  For some reason though the blog has persisted through the years that I have been in college and traveled around and has served as a medium for me to simply display the things that affect me most deeply.

Recently I read The Closing of the American Mind.  Although it leaves much to be lamented about the American university, it is still influential and inspiring.  Bloom has helped confirm the usefulness, not in the utilitarian sense, of a liberal education.  A liberal education is useful because it is comprehensive but more so because it addresses (one would hope) the fundamental questions of life.  For this reason, I have sought out the nearest university (University of Saskatchewan) to enrol in a few classes.  So I hope to clarify, mostly for my own sake, the purpose of this blog.  It will be used in the way it has always been used yet with more interaction with the content from my classes.  It will function as a "common place book", an exercise very helpful to those looking interact thoughtfully with a piece of literature.

Furthermore, since it has been a while when I last wrote a serious academic paper, the blog will give me a platform to work out and test ideas in a regular manner.

So whoever may venture to read this blog (Maria? John? Eric? Amy?), I hope you enjoy.