Letter to the editor: Senior shares advice from founder of Eastern with 'newborn' students
Issue date: 9/17/09 Section: Perspective
I read an article in The Eastern Progress titled "New students or newborn" and thought that being a senior, I could possibly shed some insight into college life in general and more specifically at EKU.
Eastern Kentucky University is a microcosm of tight knit groups. There are the officially recognized sorority and fraternity folks touting their fight songs, the non-conformists outside the student center expresses their desire for free speech, and all of those in between.
Then there are the students you see on campus that do not fit in to any of these groups. The ones that sit by themselves in the shade feeling jealous, content, or just plain ambiguity about their lonely situation.
Some might suggest joining their group, and give you reasons for why theirs is better than the other. Take this at face value, find yourself before someone else defines what you will be.
During my "newborn" status at college, I did pretty much what they expected of me. I went to my classes, made new and dull friendships, and never attempted nor thought about my existence as a college student.
Why are you here? Yes you should be actively thinking about a career, the money, and the prestige with eventually acquiring your college degree, but there are more important things.
As Ruric Nevel Roark, the founder of EKU once wrote, "The mind learns by passing from the near, the familiar, the concrete, to the remote, the strange, the abstract."
Experience is what I got during my life in college, and it wasnít given to me from EKU. It was given to me by the mistakes, failures and successes I experienced outside of my college setting. I used student loans to travel abroad, worked in horrible/fascinating jobs and witnessed human suffering in its most intense forms. I got arrested for reputable/disreputable things, and fell in love with people I never would have even met if it wasnít for my intense dissatisfaction with joining such tight knit groups.
Eastern Kentucky University is what it is, just like any other university, and do not expect for those in the position of power to guide you in the right direction.
I once had an English teacher interpret Robert Frost's famous poem "The Road Not Taken" as a story about making good choices in times of trouble, which misses the whole fucking point!
So the next time you see the fraternity folks all wearing the same shirt with the same emblem shouting the same thing just ask yourself...am I an empowered individual? And when the non-conformists scream for freedom of speech ask yourself, "what do I want to SCREAM about?"
The founder of EKU always spoke about finding beauty is his writings, and the beauty he wrote about was not superficial, or found in these artificial gangs that we are all expected to be a part of.
"Nature, art and literature are the three influences that form and refine the love of the beautiful."
- Ruric Nevel Roark.
- Justin Boyd
Eastern Kentucky University is a microcosm of tight knit groups. There are the officially recognized sorority and fraternity folks touting their fight songs, the non-conformists outside the student center expresses their desire for free speech, and all of those in between.
Then there are the students you see on campus that do not fit in to any of these groups. The ones that sit by themselves in the shade feeling jealous, content, or just plain ambiguity about their lonely situation.
Some might suggest joining their group, and give you reasons for why theirs is better than the other. Take this at face value, find yourself before someone else defines what you will be.
During my "newborn" status at college, I did pretty much what they expected of me. I went to my classes, made new and dull friendships, and never attempted nor thought about my existence as a college student.
Why are you here? Yes you should be actively thinking about a career, the money, and the prestige with eventually acquiring your college degree, but there are more important things.
As Ruric Nevel Roark, the founder of EKU once wrote, "The mind learns by passing from the near, the familiar, the concrete, to the remote, the strange, the abstract."
Experience is what I got during my life in college, and it wasnít given to me from EKU. It was given to me by the mistakes, failures and successes I experienced outside of my college setting. I used student loans to travel abroad, worked in horrible/fascinating jobs and witnessed human suffering in its most intense forms. I got arrested for reputable/disreputable things, and fell in love with people I never would have even met if it wasnít for my intense dissatisfaction with joining such tight knit groups.
Eastern Kentucky University is what it is, just like any other university, and do not expect for those in the position of power to guide you in the right direction.
I once had an English teacher interpret Robert Frost's famous poem "The Road Not Taken" as a story about making good choices in times of trouble, which misses the whole fucking point!
So the next time you see the fraternity folks all wearing the same shirt with the same emblem shouting the same thing just ask yourself...am I an empowered individual? And when the non-conformists scream for freedom of speech ask yourself, "what do I want to SCREAM about?"
The founder of EKU always spoke about finding beauty is his writings, and the beauty he wrote about was not superficial, or found in these artificial gangs that we are all expected to be a part of.
"Nature, art and literature are the three influences that form and refine the love of the beautiful."
- Ruric Nevel Roark.
- Justin Boyd
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