August 2004-May 2005
There are few things that new freshman, at least at a school like HC, should be prepared for when starting classes for the first time. While you may have read all about small class sizes in a brochure, that is nothing compared to actually sitting in a classroom of four students (which coincidentally was the size of my French course my first semester). My largest class during my first semester had a grand total of nineteen students; this was shocking both initially to me and continually to all my friends attending larger universities. Of course, not only does this mean that I had to come to class with my homework done (on most occasions) but also that I had to come to class! That’s right; HC has attendance policies, which completely shut down any hopes of a mostly class-free schedule with lots of down time. Still, my first semester schedule was pretty perfect; most weeks, I had class on three days a week and only for four hours a day. So, while I did have to actually attend my classes, much to the amazement of my friends at Purdue, there still wasn’t too much class.
All in all, my classes for my first year were fairly typical of the classes I would be taking for the remainder of my time at HC. I absolutely loathed philosophy; I had no idea what the point of the course was, and I never felt specifically philosophical while studying for it. My experience with theology was a different thing; I had expected to feel about it much the same way I had felt about philosophy. However, it was more interesting and informative that philosophy had ever hoped to be. My French and Spanish courses were actually not as exciting as I had anticipated; I wasn’t used to being the youngest, most inexperienced student in the classroom, and that was certainly the case for my first year. And, since all of the modern language courses are literature based in content, I spent the majority of homework time bent over a dictionary. However, I am exceedingly glad now that I began taking the French and Spanish courses so early because by the time I was a junior, the work load and expectations became second nature and far less foreign.
It is now time to revisit the studio art portion of my required freshman class. The course was a Great Works sequence called, “Beauty” with, as I may have mentioned before, a studio art portion. Typically, Great Works courses are meant to teach freshman three things: how to analyze a work of literature or art or music (thus, the Great Works), write a paper, and give a presentation. Of course, Beauty did all of those things for me, but in addition, I learned quite a bit about HC’s illustrious studio art department. I must take a moment to delve a little into the two professors that lead my session of Beauty; they are by far two of more interesting characters at HC and two of the most mismatched teaching partners I could make. On one hand, there was the vaguely hippie, feminist English professor, who occasionally brought her two children to class, and on the other hand was the off-the-wall, eccentric art professor, who usually seemed to be performing a class rather than lecturing it (she frequently reminded me of Professor Trelawney of the Harry Potter series, if you’re familiar with it).
Needless to say, with such incredible characters to lead this newly created class, Beauty was full of adventures for us unsuspecting freshmen. We drew grid drawings, charcoal portraits, self-portraits, portraits without paint (or any other recognizable art genre), and even made works of art out of leaves and twigs on the biology trails. It was challenging, particularly as I compared with other students in my class some of whom were actually studio art majors. But, I’ll never forget my first paper/presentation at HC. Of course, it came from Beauty, and I was terrified. I had already been introduced to the more severe grading that controls the GPAs of HC Students, and I’m sorry to say that my 4.0+ from high school quickly became a thing of the past. So, as I was randomly assigned a work of art to research, analyze, write a paper on, and give a presentation over, I was literally quaking in my seat.
My work of art was by a man named Christo, who I had never of before at the time, and the piece itself was called Valley Curtain. Now, this art professor was a wily one, and she had given each of us a work of art that is or was contemporary, modern art; needless to say, there were absolutely zero paintings. In case you’re not familiar with Valley Curtain, it was exactly as the title suggests: a giant curtain made of bright orange nylon had been constructed between two relatively small mountains in Colorado, thus creating a curtain in the shape of the valley. To point out the immensity of this curtain, please take a moment to look closely at the ground just underneath the curtain in the picture; yes, those are people wandering around down there. You can imagine that my fears about this paper and presentation, which now rested on my ability to analyze a giant orange, nylon curtain, were now confirmed and doubled over. I discovered something the following week that I was lucky in my art assignment; a classmate of mine was actually assigned a room full of peacocks as her work of art. So, I stressed and sweated my way through a five-page paper and ten minute long presentation that I somehow managed to give without revealing my internal doubts and suspicions about my analysis. Somehow, I scraped my way through to an A- on my first ever HC project. I was thrilled beyond belief and still today count it as one of my little victories at HC.
Another noteworthy experience of my freshman year was the blessed Spring Term. For the entire month of May at HC, students take only one course, which means many glorious, sun-filled afternoons without a full schedule and the fear of final exams. Spring Term is how college should be all the time. Other important notes about my first experience include my decision to take a break from my extracurricular overload from high school. I was thoroughly uninterested in clubs, committees, or even Greek Life. In fact, I found those things unnecessary. However, despite having managed to create/find a rather solid friend base of with a few girls from my hallway, I drove home nearly every weekend for the first year. I attended only a few fraternity parties, and I didn’t give the sororities a second glance. Consequently, I ended my first year with the feeling that something was lacking; sure, life at HC was great, and in general, I enjoyed it, but I was sure that I was missing something, and I was determined to find it.
