The Greyhound Editorial: Education benefits from outside perspectives
Issue date: 12/8/09 Section: Opinion
This past week was the week of causes. The Children in Need Club sponsored a documentary screening aimed at raising awareness for the spread of AIDS and HIV in Africa. Loyola's College Republicans sponsored a bake sale to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project and Walter Reed Hospital. And just before we all adjourned for Thanksgiving Break, a group of students from CCSJ attended the annual School of the Americas protest in Fort Benning, Georgia.
In college, it's often difficult to find time for much of anything that isn't classes, course work and examinations. Add to that an incessant desire to maintain a steady social life, and you might find yourself penciling notes into your date book reminding you to brush your teeth in the morning.
And so it would be remiss of us to not identify when students break through the insulation that is college and seek to make connections and draw attention to an outside world. Because, generally, it's far too easy - and far too convenient - to get lost in the shuffle of 9 a.m.'s, lunch dates, study breaks and bar nights.
"Loyola bubble" typically becomes the phrase to classify the phenomenon. When students choose to involve themselves in something that isn't studying or drinking, this campus has an involuntary knack to explain the involvement as breaking out of the Loyola bubble.
But that bubble extends a little farther than just our small section of North Charles. Because most students do tend to get lost in the shuffle of campus life. Perhaps we don't intend to; perhaps we're unaware. But at some point, for some period of time, we develop tunnel vision and forget about the world outside.
We need to remember that the stuff we get from books makes up only one component of our education; some perspective on the world outside completes it.
In college, it's often difficult to find time for much of anything that isn't classes, course work and examinations. Add to that an incessant desire to maintain a steady social life, and you might find yourself penciling notes into your date book reminding you to brush your teeth in the morning.
And so it would be remiss of us to not identify when students break through the insulation that is college and seek to make connections and draw attention to an outside world. Because, generally, it's far too easy - and far too convenient - to get lost in the shuffle of 9 a.m.'s, lunch dates, study breaks and bar nights.
"Loyola bubble" typically becomes the phrase to classify the phenomenon. When students choose to involve themselves in something that isn't studying or drinking, this campus has an involuntary knack to explain the involvement as breaking out of the Loyola bubble.
But that bubble extends a little farther than just our small section of North Charles. Because most students do tend to get lost in the shuffle of campus life. Perhaps we don't intend to; perhaps we're unaware. But at some point, for some period of time, we develop tunnel vision and forget about the world outside.
We need to remember that the stuff we get from books makes up only one component of our education; some perspective on the world outside completes it.
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