No Such Thing as Perfect

I had a pretty cool class last week and I took the time during my next class to write down, again, everything I had learned to sear it into my mind. So I know these notes are all over the place, but I'm too lazy to write it again for the eyes of others. Enjoy! I just had the most amazing Shakespeare class. One of the things that Prof. Seigfried lectures on is just about scholarship and learning and becoming better people. She talked about brain development and how challenges literally make us grow. Our brains will jump to the occasion if we give them the chance. Think about little kids and how they learn to do such amazing things. When we turn 22 is when our frontal lobe becomes solidified. This is the part of the brain that allows us to recognize that sometimes the little bit of pain right now will lead to better things. We talked about how we can transform pain into good things and how our painful experiences are things that might help us in the future. She posed the question, “Why does the Church spend so much money on producing scholars?” We get a first class education at the price of a community college. It really is amazing. As we learn how to learn, we learn how to study the Gospel. We become more well rounded people and learn how to communicate with other people and relate to them. We learn how to converse with everything and everyone. It really is amazing. They are investing in the future of the Church knowing that we will go out and share what we have learned. We talked about innocence vs. virtue vs. perfectionism. Virtue is the goal. Virtue comes from the Latin “virtus” meaning force of life/power. The word went through many interpretations throughout the year including being touched on by the Catholics. The idea of spiritual power came then rather than physical virility. Think about the monks taking a vow of chastity – they didn’t have physical power, but rather spiritual power. All these things lead to the list of virtues we have now. Innocence, compared to virtue, is static. There is no inherent power in innocence, but there is potential. Innocence is a period of time where the tools of power may be gathered, but there isn’t the power to use them quite yet. Perfectionism implies that there is an ideal and that we are not reaching it. It implies that there is a point that we can reach where we can stop working because we will know it all. Throughout this discussion, I’ve realized the importance of continuing education. I don’t want my brain to get smaller when I stop going to school and stretching it. I know now that taking any kind of break after graduation isn’t a good idea, but I should keep going with something. I also realized that teaching is exactly what I need to be doing.