The Whitworthian

Issue date: 11/20/07 Last Updated: 11/29/07

As I see college, it is a place for innovation and change. An institution that allows people to come together in common vested interests in subjects closely related to the work they wish to do in life. I use such simple terms as 'work' instead of 'career,' and 'do' instead of 'accomplish' because at college, we have no definition of the future. Even in life outside of college, one is never able to procure a constant moniker.

We are the many, the humble, the college students. We each have dreams and aspiration, either now or down the road. There is that commonality between us. If you are a student committed to these four years of subjugation and criticism, why not make something of it together? Students, you are being graded and critiqued on your work, get it. You are being judged. But that is one of the most essential aspects a college can give a person: The ability to be judged in a controlled environment, before being judged in front of the court of the world, whatever fascist you work for or become.

This is my point: During this time of declaration and decision, when we are being taught by those professors we have agreed to pay for their knowledge and life lessons, what do we do that will be judged by the outside world? When the season is so ripe with the fruition of new ideas, why aren’t we working together as well as learning?

Most majors have a certain type of “senior project” necessary for its completion. I especially commend theater and musical majors for their compilations of performance and innovation, but what I am calling for is more dramatic (forgive the pun).

Every majoring student should be allowed the opportunity to complete a “senior project” of collective proportions. Imagine if you will, a semester with a group of students from your respective majors forming a conglomerate group and create a project of its own.

I myself am an English major on the writing track. I wish that while I was at school, my final semester would be spent culminating a senior project writing a book. A piece of fiction, or anything really; some sort of project which could bring minds together. My fellow students and I would create and innovate through the different studies we have accomplished in a common goal. There is no better place to learn what you want to do with your life than to learn alongside those also learning.

The space for innovation has the ability to run rampant among us, but with the constraints of graduation pressing in, it is too hard to manage such a project. A last semester at an institution should be a culmination of learned material with a specific subject. Let’s take advantage of it.

Kelly McCrillis is an opinions columnist and a junior majoring in English and journalism. Contact him at kelly.mccrillis@whitworthian.com.

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