The University Education: A Religious Experience

The University Education: A Religious Experience


If I wanted to do an over-view of my thoughts about the university being related to religion for a layman who doesn't understand anything beneath the surface, then my first paper would be a success. Putting myself in an educated person's position of having to read that as a college essay, I would be insulted. Of course this is a post-English 220 thought. I've opened up to find myself more since then. I'm not saying that have found my perfect style. I've found a new style in myself other than the "Official Style".

I'm writing for you in a close version of the "O.S." because this is an explanation about my own writing and I feel that this is the best way to *explain*. Don't worry, by the end I'm sure that I'll have fallen away.

I've taken a close look at this paper of mine entitled _The University Education: A Religious Experience_ and found that my thoughts about the metaphor haven't changed a lot. I'm the type of person who finds little religious quirks in everything, though (A result of: accepting evolution; seeing the Bible as a bunch of parables and tall tales - including Genesis and the entire New Testament; reading Don Delillo's _White Noise_ , Heinlein's _A Stranger in a Strange Land_, Baudelaire's "Voyage"; rebelling my over-religious, over-hypocritic mother; oh ya. Moliere and Chaucer; learning about different cultures and religions; etc., etc.). I like comparing people and their actions, myself included, to Christian rituals and events. When it comes to the university as a religion, this comparing multiplies because so many of us here take our education as a life or death matter. And I think it should be. Of course there are those who are hypocritic in the university life - don't worry they get a few second chances and are then abandoned. I'm on one of my second chances.

Yes, I feel the same way about my metaphor as I did when I wrote this introduction paper. No, I don't like paper because if I were to truly put effort into the it now I would not have written it that way. My style is much different now (A result of this class and my new interest in fiction writing from Eng. 218). I like to lay things between the lines - let the reader work a little. I'm not a combination of Elliot and Pound, nor do I intend to be. I'm a Beau Jay Seeger who likes to spit some reality into fiction, let the reader taste it if they want. If they don't, they can plug their nose and swallow it anyway. If I were to write this paper now, it would be written as a story about a university student or faculty member coming to the realization that they have no religious beliefs. Only, throughout the story passages like this could be seen:

* "God, this was a tough test. Are we going to get any extra credit?" Mike Smith said handing in the exam.
"As your advisor and chair of the English department, I suggest you study more." Dr. King replied.

* Mike and his buddies knelt around the keg blind-folded; all praying to be the one not receiving the Frats mystery bong.

* Cars preaching "Matzatlan or Bust" and "Daytona Spring Break '96" sped past Mike and his buddies as they sat around an outdoor restaurant near a freeway at St. Louis with about fifty other college travelers resting from the long pilgrimage they had taken thus far from Minnesota.

* "...and we will guide you to an everlasting future if YOU put forth the effort and make YOUR commitment to the university over the rest of your college years." Mike thought this guy sounded like one of those money pilfering T.V. evangelists while he slouched among the rest of the incoming freshman class.

I think that writing this paper in story form and style would add more effectiveness to the idea rather than just regurgitating fragments of what I think like I did on the introduction paper. I may have gotten an "A" on that for some classes, but it wouldn't have meant as much to me personally. Or as much to someone reading it. Making the reader like what they are reading and making them see something from a different point of view is what my style is all about. It is what I like to read and what I like to write.

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