Three semesters ago, colloquium was nothing more than just a simple one credit class where we meet once a week to find out what either Holtz or Merck cares to lecture on that specific day. But now, it is much more. Now, I am much more aware to the natural sciences that affect me in my daily life. Now, I understand all of the work Holtz and Merck go though just to get along a point to our idle brains. Now, I see the objective of colloquium.
Too melodramatic? Maybe. But there are some memories from the College Park Scholars Earth, Life and Time program that I don’t plan to forget anytime soon.
My first memory is the field trip to the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary and Chesapeake Beach. This initial field trip gave me both the chance to get to know some of my other ELT students, along with the idea of what the class and its field trips would entail. Since I was able to get hands-on experiences with fossils, I was able to get a sense of what Holtz and Merck are always so excited about.
My second memory is the trip to the National Zoo. I haven’t been there since I was young, and this time, I was able to figure out why I loved the Zoo so much back then. I wasn’t all that fond of learning all of the Latin names of the animals, nor was I fond of the outrageous prices for food. But getting a chance to view all of the animals and their animal-like antics made the whole experience worth while. Plus, I was able to revisit some of my precious childhood memories.
A third memory is not of a specific moment, but of several moments. I am speaking of the time I spent in class doing group projects. At first, I found most of the projects to generally be quite trivial and pointless. But, soon enough, I figured out that the ideas that Holtz and Merck were trying to grind into my head.
Then there were the texts. Ah yes, the dreaded texts. Whether it was another Jared Diamond book telling the reader another meaningless fact of how humans and chimpanzees are related, or whether is was Park telling the reader about how you should never assume any scientific theory to be 100% true; it seemed more and more that the texts had serious meaning; all we had to do was read between the lines.
This brings up another point. Holtz and Merck love this stuff. I mean, they LOVE this stuff. I figured eventually that I would begin to grasp even a fraction of all of that stuff that Holtz and Merck are so crazy about. Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. But, that’s not exactly the point. The point is that whenever someone is really crazy about something, it usually rubs of onto some of their peers, or student, in this case. And I feel that, whether the ELT students like it or not, some of it has rubbed off onto all of us. I’m not saying that each of us has a tiny Holtz or a tiny Merck in our head who pinch our brains in order to remind us of everything we learned in ELT. But, we at least have something similar.
This brings me to my final topic. The three semesters that I spent in the Earth, Life, and Time scholars program taught me some valuable lessons. First I learned that all college level courses, even just a one-credit course, must be taken seriously. Second, I learned that just because a scientist says that something is true, it does not mean that it is so; my ability to questions authorities has drastically increases while in this class. And finally, I was able to see how not just myself, but my fellow ELTers grew through this life changing experience in an intellectually, emotional, and spiritual way.