So you chose Midwestern State University as your new home. Cool! Why? Did the red brick architecture pull you in? Did the cost appeal to your parents (hey mom!) or your pocket? Was it because the school was a close commute home? Well whatever the reason was, one reason you truly never hear is because MSU is a liberal arts school.
Personally, when I came to MSU I had absolutely no concept on what liberal arts even meant. So what are the liberal arts? Liberal arts are subjects like literature, art, and all that people qualify under as “why are you even majoring in that.” But what people don’t realize is that those subjects truly shape you into a more well-rounded person. Think about it, what if you went your whole life thinking the ocean was just that big blue thing that’s made of water? Boring. Right? Now imagine somewhere, sometime you pick up a book that describes that same boring ocean as another land. A land where the skies are always aquamarine, full of movement, full of mystery and adventure in each dark crevice, full of color and life throughout. Hopefully you’d want to keep reading and find out that the big blue thing isn’t just big and blue.
That is what life would be without liberal arts, black and white. As Albert Einstein once said, "The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." In other words, you would just focus on the textbook definition, test over it, and in a couple of weeks, you'd forget about it.
Last week there was a faculty forum that explained the history and importance of the liberal arts at MSU. The professors basically explained that they were either brought up in liberal arts school, or attended higher education that focused on the liberal arts. They said that taking classes not only towards their degree but classes that broadened their perspectives helped them become more well-rounded people.
That being said, MSU claims to be a liberal arts school but does not make it mandatory to take said classes. The professors that were speaking at the forum kept stressing the importance of a liberal arts education but failed to say that we lack the structure to truly be a liberal arts school. I believe that was the whole debate of the forum, why are we here? What is the point of being something we really aren’t? I’m not saying that my education at Midwestern is bad, all I’m trying to suggest is maybe offering more options for students to engage in the liberal arts. If I had known before that liberal arts meant that I would be learning through literature and art, I may have looked into more liberal arts schools. The reason for that being that we learn a lot more through other people’s perspective, we get to walk in their shoes for a small amount of time.
Whether that be through writing, reading or art, I truly believe that is what makes us not just suitable for the workforce but better citizens overall. Isn’t that the whole point of college, not partying your beer gut on, but broadening your perspective on the fast-changing world we live in?
