Appreciation of the liberal arts

Upon my third experience of mid-semester stress, it's only fitting that I have come to realize that the complaints about liberal education are habitual and not random. It seems that as students are being hit with 15- page papers and 200-point tests for classes they feel they don't need, complaining is universal. These complaints, however, are simply unjust.

The most obvious statement to counter the complaints against the "stupid" liberal arts core courses we have to take is the fact that we are a liberal arts college. I realize that most students here at the University of Northern Iowa did not come here out of a lifelong dream of wearing purple and gold, but rather due to convenience, price and following friends. This can be supported by our disproportionately large in-state population. But this does not discredit my statement.

When you attend a university, you do so under the assumptions that you acquire prior to arriving. Everyone has a choice of where to go to school, and UNI does not hide its agenda. Therefore, I fail to understand why an individual would come here without wanting a liberal arts education. Plenty of schools don't require this education and would be better suited for students who don't want to study history along with engineering.

With that in mind, I applaud UNI's academics and whole-heartedly support the liberal arts education. While my fellow students complain about having to take a class such as Our Musical Heritage when they are a teaching major, I would argue that this diversity adds to our education. I may sound like a billboard promoting the liberal arts agenda, but I simply believe there is more to be gained from taking such a varied course load than most would imagine.

The liberal arts core requires us to take classes we wouldn't have otherwise taken. While some may truly be uninteresting to you and leave you unchanged, many are eye-opening and beneficial. This mandate requiring us to take specified classes allows us to experience new things we wouldn't have otherwise explored and adds to our repertoire of knowledge. While some of the classes may have no apparent application in your life, everyone benefits from being more educated.

My one complaint would be that universities don't offer enough liberal arts classes. The liberal arts core helps generally unpopular fields like history and science by getting kids to participate in those courses, but departments such as the arts are simply ignored. I believe that every student would benefit from creative courses such as photography and painting. While they may not be everyone's cup of tea, many would benefit from a more expanded appreciation of the arts.

I believe that by expanding the liberal arts core courses, we could truly improve this university. Rather than having kids float by taking 15 hours each semester, we could have students enjoying courses they otherwise would have never taken. This view, I'm sure, is not popular with many students judging by the comments I get by my neighbors in my liberal arts courses. "Who cares about writing and grammar" and "When am I ever going to use statistics in my life" are all too common phrases I hear. But after going through the process of reviewing the papers of my peers, I believe English is an all-too-forgotten field.

When juniors write like third graders and professors say, "You all did very good on the test," I can't help but feel the need for stricter, more enforced course loads. No matter how many master's or PhDs you have for your particular field of study, you still sound like an idiot when you can't speak or write.