My Time in your class Sara McNaughtan f 9-12

I was preparing myself for a semester which I had to endure a three hour class taught by an old man whom believed he was the most sophisticated person in the room and could not learn anything beyond what he already had. I instead walked into a classroom where the first sentence out of this professors mouth was I majored in alcohol and other substances I wont mention. This is the point at which I realized this was going to be one of my favorite classes. The whole semester I woke up every Friday at nine a.m., I did not prepare for three hours of torture but instead hours of enlightenment in the forum of debate and dropping kicking political correctness in the face. Being able to do this brought Socrates quote the unexamined life is not worth living even more to the surface of my life. I started examining the fact that a corrupt world is a necessary one because the people that live in it and rule it are run by sin and guilt. Though along with this I know that I alone decide how corrupt I will be and how much damage or healing I will bring to the table. Walking into this class and learning right away that questioning what we are taught is a deeper way to live life and being shown repeatedly that morality is purely subjective. Should one choose to support Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero for all he did do on behalf of African Americans or should he be more pictured as a scoundrel for his moral hypocrisy? After this then looking at the fifties followed by the sixties and understanding why one needs to look at a generation and understand how it caused the generation that came after it, along with how it was shaped by the one before it.

We as a society can choose to keep the sugar coated world we are presented with as a child a reality or we can choose to learn that the world we live in is full of flaws and corruption. The nature of war is often seen as a corruption and flaw yet it is what helps make our world beautiful. War gives us meaning, whether it secures freedom, stops uprising, suppresses freedom, creates a new world, or shows the ability of ones people. War gives those who fought, died, and survived it meaning. War can either be evil or beautiful this goes for the entire systematic world that we live in. Perspective is reality. Our societys political system has created a congress and legislator that never seem to die; this is due to the fact that only the good die young. Since our society has created a political system run by the elderly we unfortunately have close to a thirty year lag before policies are able to be changed. The United states alone has seen this first hand starting with ending of slavery and African Americans receiving any type of rights, then it was woman rights, the last one before todays battles was the environment and now we are struggling against old Christians about gay marriage and abortion. We must wait for the congressmen and woman to die before the new age thinkers can change current policies. I may or may not choose to believe in a god or the universe I am personally in no rush to decide. What I have come to realize is how grateful I am that we have taken the approach to studying religion in a way that we are not being sensitive just because we are in Utah. This class gladly sees the world as diverse and how worshiping can be different for every individual. I believe that religion is guilt and a burden it teaches us that we can never be good enough. Religion gives a way to not take full responsibility for our actions. I have come to decide that due to me feeling about this, my salvation will be based on relationship and not based on whichever god I choose to pray to.

The end of the semester is now upon me and this is still one of my favorite classes. I have highly enjoyed the fact that I had the chance to openly express myself and not be worried that I would be criticized on the fact that most of my opinions come across as and are indeed cynical. My thinking from the start of the class till now has not really changed much over the semester however though by ability extent at which I look at context and meaning deepened and I now have a better understanding of how to look at both sides of the equation, the key to being successful in the humanities is being able to understand both sides to a point of view the more you understand this the more you can understand why you think the way you think and choose the decisions you do. The only downside to this class was that it was only one day a week I would have loved to have more time in the classroom and been able to spend more time on each section. Since this class was on a Friday and holidays we had this class was canceled which meant even less time in the classroom. I would have also liked to have written more one page opinion pieces for this class considering I have so many. Over all this class gets an A in my book and I would love to take more classes from this professor.