Going into my precept room, it immediately became apparent I wasn’t the only one whose feathers had been ruffled by this article. There was a general murmur of discontentment as one of my classmates waved around a printout of the very positive course evaluations of last semester while another commented on how the situation really only made those of us who had stuck it out in the sequence look better, parodying the Marines’ motto as she laughingly commented that it made us “the few, the proud, the strong.” After listening to the heated discussion happening around me for a few minutes, the thought hit me on the perfect way to give voice to my classmates’ complaints over the misrepresentation of HUM. So I thus present a declamation in defense and in praise of HUM.
When I first received a pamphlet outlining the general details of the HUM sequence last, I leapt out of my armchair nestled in the corner of my room and thudded downstairs. “Mom,” I shrieked excitedly, “There’s a course at Princeton that was designed for me!” From the moment I first read about it, all the half-thought-out visions of my perfect college course seemed to coalesce before my eyes. I could think of no better way to start off my college experience than by taking a survey course of the fundamentals of Western thought.
Though I won’t lie and say the HUM sequence was exactly what I thought it would be, for good or bad, it has still been a life-changing experience. Reading the pillars of Western thought was informative, but the majority of the benefits I have received from the HUM sequence are intangible. I could go on and on about how I became a better speaker, debater and writer because of the course, but that wouldn’t give a true measure of its benefits. As my classmates said last Thursday when we were discussing the article, a lot of the HUM sequence has less to do with readings and papers and a lot more to do with the people in the course.
The friendships that formed while commiserating over the impossible amounts of readings some weeks are those that I hope to keep for all four years I am here at Princeton, a sentiment shared by many of my precept-mates. I will no doubt remember the biweekly precepts as some of the best I had here at Princeton, not only due to how engaging and informative they were but because of the fun we had discussing the readings in between the inside jokes and infectious laughter. That’s not to say there weren’t times where I didn’t curse the fact that we had to read 500 pages of the Bible or want to rip my hair out while trying to find supporting quotes for a paper three hours before it was due. However, I understand this to be part of taking the Mt. Everest-esque challenge that is the HUM sequence.
Many of my classmates, even those who dropped the course, agree with my sentiments. The course evaluations still show that a majority of people who take the HUM sequence enjoy it greatly and would heartily recommend it. It would be an enormous fallacy to be persuaded by the few vocal malcontents who dropped the course for reasons other than scheduling problems that the HUM sequence is a substandard survey course that is no substitute for “reading many, many Wikipedia articles.” For me, the HUM sequence has been what the pamphlet I read last April promised: a survey course of some of the fundamentals of Western thought, literature and philosophy. For those who take offense with it being exactly what the course description detailed, I can offer no advice except the admonition that in hindsight maybe they should have read the course description a little more closely.
With the words of Erasmus’ “ In Praise of Folly” still fresh in my mind from my reading last night, in closure I will take the spirit of his statements and again address the malcontents. There are some who would say that to take the HUM sequence is folly because it doesn’t have enough depth or doesn’t spend enough time on certain readings. Well, as Erasmus stated almost 500 years ago, there’s definitely a place in this world for folly.
Kelsey Zimmerman is a freshman from Glen Allen, Va. She can be reached at kzimmerm@princeton.edu.
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