h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: St. John's College Annapolis, MD - A761339
Author: dwight - U193722

Here we go...

Hey, Dwight, are you a Johnny? I am - SF'99! I think it's great that you're writing this, and it should definitely go into the Edited Guide. That said, I don't think there's any reason you couldn't add a bit more, and give readers more of a feel for what the school's like.

The list of readings does that, a bit, although I have one comment about that. Since the readings change from year to year (and from campus to campus), you might mention that, or say that this particular list is current for some certain year.

I think it would also be fun to talk a bit about the culture and traditions of the school - stuff like the lectures, and swing dances, and the croquet match, the fact that Johnnies are called "Johnnies" - y'know, textural stuff, that wouldn't be on a college brochure, but still might be interesting to know about. Of course, there's always Francis Scott Key...

Anyway, I'm really glad to see you're writing about it, and even if you don't decide to expand, what you've written so far is a good overview of what makes St. John's unique. Oh, you might want to add a link to the website: http://www.sjca.edu



GTB

I'd like to echo GTB's comments.

Also a query. What does 'Great Books Cirriculum' mean or is the last word a misspelt version of 'curriculum'?

oops

As I am writing this, I wonder if this would be best done by having an entry for the curriculum, and one for each campus? Would you be willing to write on SF?
Oh yeah... yes I am a johnny Annapolis '05

ZSF- when it comes to spelling... just say "you misspelled..." I took phonics in second grade, and never learned how to spell after that...

It reminds me of a poem I knew a long time ago, when there was a fashion for teaching more phonetic spelling and then 'transferring' the children to standard English. Thank goodness I never learned that way.

Mai hart iz sad for littel wunz
Hoo wend ther wai to skool
Tew lern the Inglish spelling
With its total lack of rewl .. etc.

(It's too long ago for me to remember if my spelling is like the original).

Or those T-shirts "Hucked Un Fonikz Wurkud Fur Mi!"

>>As I am writing this, I wonder if this would be best done by having an entry for the curriculum, and one for each campus? Would you be willing to write on SF?<<

Yeah, I could probably do that. I wonder... three entries could work. We could also, if the entries on the individual campuses aren't very long, splice those two together into one entry with two sections, but we can talk about that after we get something written. I've got one thing burning up my to-do list already, but after that (and it should be quick), I'll start an SF Campus entry. Sounds fun!

(It'll go well with my 'Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA' entry and the 'Hotel Santa Fe, Dallas, Texas, USA' entry, which I'll finish up one of these days. Then I just have to write a recipe for 'Santa Fe Chicken'...)

'05, huh? So you should be finishing up freshman year now, eh? How was it? Now you've got the summer where you can get your summer reading out of the way in any hotel in the nation, without even having to buy a book, thanks to the Gideons!

Hello,

Good entry. But I have some problems with it...

As GTB mentioned before this entry needs more 'texture' to describe the college. The provided book-list could be reduced to a minimum - eg. In the four years students have to read ### books, ranging from Homer and Descartes to Tolstoy and Einstein (alternatively, you could re-title the Entry to 'The Great Books Curriculum at St. John's...')

When I read that entry, I got the following impression: There's a college called St. John's in the US. There, students must read a lot of books.

That can't be it. On the other hand, maybe I am exagerating a bit.

BTW... When you read that many books books in only 4 years (Tolstoy's War and Peace alone has enough material for an entire semester), do you have the impression that people *understand* what they read? I mean, of course the essence still hangs in one's memory, but isn't it too much quantity? What's your impression? What's the general impression of the students, I bet there are some that would want less books and more intensity instead. I would be interested in that information. - That has nothing to do woth your entry, I am just curious.

HELL

Hi Hell!

It's true, one could spend a semester on War and Peace, but then one wouldn't have time in that semester to read Hegel and Marx and Freud and.... yeah.

There isn't time to cover many books in depth. A book you decide to write about, you look at more closely. Some books, like Euclid's Elements, everyone actually spends a semester (and a half) on, but it's a common saying at St John's that the first year is wasted on first year students, and everyone realizes they'd get a lot more out of Euclid if they revisited him after the four years (after properly learning how to read and discuss a text - the skill taught at St John's). Personally, I'll probably spend the rest of my life revisiting Euclid, at least occasionally, but I'm a math type.

It's a little bit like visiting Europe, and touring 14 cities in 10 countries in 30 days. I did that, and it didn't give me a very in-depth idea of any of those cities, but it gave me an idea of which one's I want to go back to later. After St John's, I knew that Physics will probably be my specialty, if and when I decide to specialize, and I had some interesting ideas about how Physics fits into the big picture. I knew that I like Hume and hate Kant, and that I could easily spend a career going into the details of why. I knew that I really like Virginia Woolf, which is not something that ever would have occurred to me had I not been forced to read her.

Many Johnnies go to graduate school and specialize in something else after graduating.

As far as how the students feel when they're there... fewer books and more intensity?... I don't remember getting that impression. With specific books, there's always, "I'd like to spend more time on that", but then the next book on the program is not something you'd want to miss (well, there are one or two - I think we could have given George Eliot a miss and spend more time on *anything* else). I think most people find it to be a good balance, considering that we've only got four years, and if you'd wanted to spend four years just reading Aristotle, you'd have gone to school somewhere else.

That's all IMO of course, and likely to be biased, etc. Dwight's in Annapolis, not Santa Fe, and he's there now, not last decade, so he very well might have a different perspective.


GTB

Hi all,

I agree with Helll - this is a good start, but it would be good to know more about what life's like as a student - any non-curriculum traditions that are unique to St John's, famous alumni, campus life etc. There's a good entry on Keele University (UK) at A346367, which offer some ideas!

best wishes

Otto

Hi, thanks for answering my questions. I don't think I would have *liked* that 'book curriculum', that would be something for my wife... Then again, she'd probably like to spend MORE time on selected books... And then again I *like* to see the stuff I do in the BIG-FRAME... What the hey.

I think that the 'Blitz'-Tourism analogy you mentioned is a quite good one (maybe one could add that aspect to the entry?). The problem with those tours is that people expect to see everything and then they get disappointed because of the shallowness of the tour. If one, as you said, expects exactly that, ie. have a good overall picture to decide what to go for later, then it's quite sensible to take that tour... (I've seen some TV-documentry about some crazy Americans who did that tour; most of them got disappointed - mostly because they didn't have time to do shopping. One of them, however, *liked* the tour, his argument was exactly the same: Good overall picture, concentrate on selected targets later. Whoo - I thought - one of them's got a brain! It's probably the same with the books.)

BTW: Are there more than one St.John's Colleges in the US, Santa Fe? Annapolis? Do they all offer the 'book curriculum'? I think that would be also nice to be included in the entry - or is it already there?

See you around,

HELL

Pity: dwight seems to have 'Elvised' for a while.

Maybe we should move this one to the Entry.

I hope he comes back soon,

HELL