First Year Reflections

At Christopher Newport University, every time I went to the Philosophy Department Website, I was greeted with the Socratic dictum that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” While perhaps it was repetition that created the truth of that sentence or maybe there is something self-evident about it, I have found it helpful. Perhaps the retrospective blog was spurred on by the recent evaluation of my first year by a jury of my professors (I was found to have had a productive first year and was declared on/a little ahead of schedule with regards to the goal of finishing coursework and exams in the next year and a half to two years). Regardless, I figured that it would be good to get some thoughts back on the blog and keep everyone who reads and/or gives a damn an update on my activities and plans for the next few months.

This year I’ve taken 2 semesters of Arabic, coursework on methodology in the field of religion/comparative ethics, and two courses on Islam. I’ve read more books than I can recount and the number of articles I’ve printed and read is likely responsible for the sizable depletion of a forest somewhere. This summer I will keep up with Arabic, take a course on Human Rights, French for Reading, and be trained to teach a course called “Multi-cultural film” which is, essentially, applied cultural theory. In the fall, I’ll be taking more Arabic, and courses on pragmatic theory in the study of religion, Muhammad and the Qur’an and possibly sitting in on some lectures in a feminism course. My area of study has narrowed to the justification of violence and/within "subversive" religious/political discourse (I’ve been told by a prominent ethicist that my area of interest scares her…happens I guess). I assume that this will be the subject of later posts, but suffice it to say, Abbey and I are having a kid (still working on transitioning more smoothly from one topic to another in my written work).

Bringing a child into the world is rather daunting (I mean…have you seen this place lately?!), doing so in the middle of a semester should be a lot of work, but Abbey and I are both thrilled to become parents in October. Fortunately a couple of my closest friends are a couple steps ahead of us on this journey so we have plenty of great examples to learn from (of course, in addition to the sterling examples set by our parents who raised brilliant, good looking, and quite humble children like Abbey and I).

There’s plenty more to say, but if I say it all now then it will be another long hiatus before I think of anything interesting to share…and that’s just no damn fun. I’ll leave with the statement that, despite my typical cynicism towards the state of the world and pessimism towards the possibility of any substantial change, the thought of becoming a father certainly has given me some sort of hopeful outlook for the upcoming year (hope in what, I’m not exactly sure, but stay tuned).

Thanks for reading.