Four Courses Blended Into One

Jonas Clark Hall

                I can’t believe it’s only the second week of classes. I already feel so engaged in everything I’m doing in classes that it seems like it’s been at least a month so far. The incredible thing about my classes is how connected they are to one another. I thought Wednesdays would be terrible because I have all four classes piled on one another, but it’s helped me make so many connections. Let me break down an average Wednesday. (I don’t know if this really is an average Wednesday since I’ve only had two of them so far.)

                I get up in the morning, get ready, go to breakfast at the cafeteria and then head off to Economics. We spend time talking about making choices with trade-offs and we learn the difference between normative and positive. In this context, positive means how the world is and normative means how the world ought to be.

                Next, I go to lunch and then off to psychology. What is normative again? In psychology it means normal behavior. I make a mental note to not confuse the two definitions while my professor discusses different theories of psychology. He starts to talk about a man named B. F. Skinner. We learned about his theories of observable psychology through stimulus and response. Before I know it, it’s 1:15 and my next class starts at 1:25.

Freud's Perspective

                I trudge through the snow covered campus to my Personal Values class. We’re talking about what makes an argument logically valid. I’m reading over my notes when my professor says that next week we’ll be talking about B. F. Skinner. This is just too much. I know that my classes are all social science, but really? This is just getting weird.

                After class, I have my first real break of the day. I go back to my room for two and half hours to study before going to dinner and off to managerial communications. Did you know that a huge part of communicating and motivating people is psychological? My brain is spinning, but in a really good way. It’s an experience I never had in high school that my knowledge from one class is so directly connected to my other classes.

                One other cool thing that actually just happened – I’m a student ambassador. That sounds really fancy, right? It means that one day a week, I open my room to prospective students on tours. It was a really cool experience. I remember going on my tour here and the friendliness of everyone really made it a very pleasant experience. I hope that I was able to make that experience equally enjoyable for that group of students. I’m a student ambassador on Thursdays from 11-12, so if you’re thinking about Clark University, I’d love to meet you.

                Along with this entry, you may have noticed a bunch of pictures of Clark University covered in snow. I took those pictures today. That snow storm last night was the real deal. It’s really beautiful and I’m thankful for the small campus when I’m going from one building to the next in the snow. Have a nice week and if you’re a local, I hope you had a nice snow day/two-hour delay. We didn’t have one here, but several classes were cancelled.

The Green - Which I guess right now would be called The White