By Monica Sanchez, our winner of the Young Author's scholarship. She recently started her first year at St. Mary's College.
During the first two weeks of classes I felt terribly disloyal to the English language: my native tongue, my best subject, my enduring passion. Until senior year I always thought I’d study English in college. What happened? I wish I knew. I’ve had agonizing trouble believing I’ve made the right decision. In fleeting moments, I am fully convinced that I have.
My major is Integral. “What’s that?” you ask. “I wish I knew,” I reply. Three weeks into the semester and I still have trouble articulating to others what I’m learning and why. Here’s my best attempt to describe my Chosen Path: We read and study really old stuff, and discuss the heck out of it. Ugh. I can’t do it. That just sounds like any old major.
In high school I vowed I’d never take another math class after graduation, that I’d never conjugate another foreign verb after Spanish II, that I would ignore the sciences at all costs. I have broken my vows. Willingly, somehow. Willingly! Perhaps this means that subconsciously I’ve decided to make amends with the right (or is it left? I’m not good at spatial relationships) side of my brain.
By joining Integral (the so-called cult of Saint Mary’s College), I have agreed to take four more grueling years of math, eight more torturous semesters of foreign language, and spend six full hours per week in a science lab.
I must really stress, though, that these classes are not high school carbon copies. They are different. In math, we have round-table discussions about Euclid. We demonstrate his ancient proofs. Numbers are never allowed into the classroom. They just are not relevant. What a revelation it is to know that math is far more than numbers may ever dream to be.
No one speaks Ancient Greek anymore. A dead language. Somehow, intuition tells me that studying the same words spoken by Sappho, Homer, Plato, Socrates will prove to be far more useful than elementary Spanish (yo, tu, el, nosotros, ustedes, ellos…) ever could.
In Lab, we study a meridian plinth, a big slab of concrete and mysterious knee-high monument to outsiders. She brings tears to my eyes. When the sun is directly overhead a shadow is cast on the plinth’s face, forming a perfect right triangle, thus determining the elevation of the sun. It blows my mind.
All that I’ve been exposed to this month has given me more to consider at one time than I thought possible. One day I hope to be as confused and curious as my professors are, so that I may be able to teach Integral half as well.
