The summer before my freshman year at Tufts, I worked in the basement of a Washington, D.C. law firm. The job paid well — more than I had made at my last summer job waiting tables — and I thought it would be a great experience to work in a real, functioning office.
But the job's initial glamour dulled quickly. The work was boring. I sorted documents in databases, put together spreadsheets, organized legal binders and redacted privileged documents with big strips of white tape. With no natural light or skyline to look out on, I labored under hostile fluorescents as June turned into July.
This job would have been horrifically soul-crushing, even scarring, if I hadn't landed in a corner of the office staffed by several 30-something female staff attorneys. They'd lost that bright-eyed innocence I still carried with me and still wore like a badge. They were loud, cynical and funny, possessing the learned wisdom that I thought I would need to properly navigate college. They saw in me a version of their younger selves; I reminded them of the days when they were younger and more free.
This is not to say that they were unhappy people, disappointed with the choices they'd made. They worked for a good law firm and made good money, but it was clear that they missed the four years I had ahead of me. And in those moments when they were serious, honest and clear, they reminisced about what made college important in their lives and what made them ache to go back to it. "Just learning things. Being free to think," one of my co-workers said. "That's what I miss most." That freedom had set each of them down a path that they would follow for the rest of their lives. The importance of that sentiment would only become clear to me later.
Despite their great advice, I went into my freshman year with the wrong frame of mind. I am partially to blame for not heeding my co-workers' counsel, but I also hold Tufts somewhat responsible, too. As incoming freshmen, we were assigned Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Beyond Mountains" (2003) to read before school started as part of the Common Reading Program. "Mountains Beyond Mountains" explores the life and work of Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health and an incredible humanitarian, doctor and all-around human being. The book underlines Tufts' core values of globalism and active citizenship, but it also narrowed my perspective of what I thought one could learn and achieve with a liberal arts degree. I felt compelled to follow Farmer's path in my studies — not my own — and found myself unable to do so. I floundered through the classes I thought I should be taking and even questioned my decision to enroll at Tufts.
It wasn't until I was buying books at the beginning of my sophomore year and said to myself, "I don't want to read any of these books!" that I really took a step back and began to wonder exactly what I was doing at Tufts. I'd gone from high school to Tufts without taking the necessary time to put my education in perspective. I asked myself why I wanted to obtain a liberal arts degree. I wondered what a liberal arts degree really would mean in my life beyond dollars and cents, a future job and a few lines on a résumé. I asked what I wanted from Tufts and what I wanted from myself, finally asking all the questions I should have asked before I ever stepped foot on the Hill.
And I still don't have all the answers to those questions, but I've taken a lot of time to think about them, and I have a pretty good handle on what I think my liberal arts education will mean in my life. There's the cliché that says a college education teaches you how to think, but writer David Foster Wallace once argued that, more importantly than the mere capacity to think, a liberal arts education gives you the freedom to choose what to think about. We have these four fantastic years to explore and to try new things. As a liberal arts institution, we should highlight this freedom to incoming students who, like me, may not have given these questions enough consideration. We should spur incoming freshmen to see and embrace the intellectual freedom nascent to the liberal arts.
We structure this freedom and exploration into our curriculum. Distribution requirements force students to explore a variety of disciplines and subject areas. They are meant to broaden our frame of reference, to introduce ideas and concepts that we would never otherwise see or understand if we studied only within one field. But why do we offer only one perspective on a liberal arts education to incoming freshmen? We should incorporate into the Common Reading Program the diversity innate to the university's curriculum. We should challenge them to question their underlying assumptions about education and demonstrate all that can be gained through the liberal arts.
Rather than having students read one book expressing one opinion, I propose we send incoming students a variety of essays and articles, exposing them to the multitude of opportunities available at Tufts. We could even include work done by current students: papers, theses, research projects, short-fiction, extracurricular programming, poetry, music, film, photography and visual art. Much of this material could even be disseminated online, made available for the intellectually curious to find on their own. Each piece should highlight a different perspective of a Tufts liberal arts education, showing all the opportunities that new students will have to explore ideas across disciplines at Tufts. This education will inform the rest of their lives, and incoming freshmen should be shown our university's intellectual diversity so they can be ready to embrace it when they first arrive at Tufts.
I recognize that the Common Reading Program was put in place to introduce students to the concept of active citizenship, but active citizenship is just one part of a Tufts education. The Common Reading Program should reflect the university's intellectual diversity and the free choice innate to the liberal arts. It's what my co-workers missed most in the basement of a D.C. law office when they didn't always have the freedom to choose what to think about, and it's what David Foster Wallace saw as the lifelong benefit of a liberal arts education — he told the graduating Class of 2005 in a commencement address at Kenyon College that "The only choice we get is what to worship."
As a liberal arts institution we should not frame a Tufts education through any one specific lens, but instead we should show incoming students the hundreds of that lenses they will be able to look into and explore. Let students come to decisions for themselves; let them choose what to worship. I'm glad I did.
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Andrew Helms is a senior majoring in history.
