Who are we, where are we going, what should we do?

Since day one these questions ha

ve been presented to us. And it is my understanding that come the end of this se
mester we should be able to answer them. Generally speaking, first-year honors l
ectures are instituted in order to introduce college freshmen to the type of cri
tical thinking and application of texts and experiences to their coursework (and
more so, to their life) that will be expected of them throughout their followin
g years of school. The course should expand the way the students view the world
in which they live and guide them so that they can begin to see it from outside
of just their own perspective, and I genuinely believe that was the attempt of H
ON 1000, however, in my opinion, it has not succeeded, and possibly has done jus
t the opposite.
The first major flaw I find with the course is that it requires a new set of
vocabulary. As in every field of study, there is a specific set of vocabulary t
hat will need to be learned so that one can properly understand it. The average
person may not know what is meant by the dopaminergic system or alpha-synuclein, but
if you are talking to someone who studies Parkinson's Disease they certainly wo
uld. There is not an intrinsic issue with this, in fact, it often allows those u
sing the selective lexicon to more precisely communicate, the problem exists her
e because frankly, this is not a field of study that anyone outside of Wayne could
possibly be exposed to. There is no one who can precisely define may of the ter
ms or phrases that are needed in order to succeed in HON 1000. Anyone outside of
the Honors College has no idea what I mean when I say ways of seeing or burger kin
g effect; this exclusivity drastically restricts the audience that I can reach wi
th the knowledge learned in HON 1000 if, in fact, I was learning anything.
A goal of the Honors class is to encourage students to view an event, situat
ion, problem, etc. from another perspective and to be fair I think that the cour
se does this. My problem, however, is that the course really only allows the stude
nt to see from one other perspective. Every assignment in this course is very bi
ased and the questions are quite leading. They push you towards the correct way to
see something, and when you attempt to answer one of those questions you are ne
arly unable to do so without the rhetoric, vocabulary and general way of seeing ta
ught in the course. Instead of allowing the student to come to their own conclus
ions, by perhaps a taught process of information evaluation, they are just told
that they should view it from X perspective.
I believe many of the readings throughout the course were informative, and s
ome very interesting. The overarching ideas and questions proposed definitely st
ruck a chord in me and forced me to do some self-reflecting. I have questioned a
t times if the course is intentionally set up this way, and that by the end of i
t each of the students are supposed to have learned that yes, different perspect
ives are necessary, however, you should not just have one other, nor should you
just absentmindedly take that perspective from someone else, it should be based
on a true understanding of the situation. This, though, to be honest, seems a li
ttle too meta and outlandish. I think that I have gained all I could have from t
his course, even if it was through a very indirect route, so in that it was not
entirely useless.