-can you point to that in the text

-if I may

-an interesting reading of the text

-can you unpack that

-it seems to me

-perhaps I was unclear

-is that from Aristotle?

The first two sentences of an email for a reading group

haha WOW this is so late.

okay so I got this AGES ago and I didn’t answer it and then i forgot about it so this is MEGA LATE and anon i do not know if you will see this, BUT.

Best things about SJC: 

The people are some of the most interesting you will ever meet. Some of the smartest, most thoughtful, creative people I’ve ever met are johnnies.

Despite its shortcomings, the education I received at SJC was excellent and believe it or not, I use the skills and texts from undergrad all the time in my life. It genuinely made me able to evaluate and understand complex ideas and arguments in ways that I would not have been able otherwise. The ability to have an intense conversation wherein parties do not agree without it becoming a fight is rarer than pearls, and it’s everywhere in johnnies. 

fuck dude, you wanna read some books? sjc will make you read the books. you wanna study things but think you won’t have time in a different program? St. John’s will make you study it. I was hesitant about the four years of math--I have a math-related learning disability--but being required to study it in the ways that you do there ended up providing me with information that I use all the time. Did you know that theoretical linguistics uses the same logicians as a lot of higher math? I didn’t, until I was reading some linguistics because of reasons and realized it was drawing on two mathematicians I’d read and enjoyed junior year. whack

You’ll do excellent, difficult work, and it can be deeply rewarding.

It’s fascinating. I learned things that I would never have learned, and having read so many fundamental Western thought texts, I am very well-equipped to interact with modern texts, my own research into historical texts, and I’m able to view the historical underpinnings of current thoughts and movements. also i can recite the opening of the Iliad but only when drunk, see below for more context

Nobody knows what you’re studying, so you can say literally anything and it won’t matter.

Worst things about SJC:

philosophy students are jackasses. Yes, this includes me and all of my friends.

The Program is extremely narrow in terms of geographic and racial scope. That’s Western historical canon for you unfortunately.

Substance abuse is VERY common (mostly alcohol, in my experience) even compared to other schools, partly because the Program is incredibly intense and the tiny tiny social microcosm of the school is a pressure cooker. 

if you don’t wanna read books maybe give sjc a pass idk

The college does not... particularly support its students well, especially in respect to mental health. There is very much an attitude of “if you can’t handle it then get out,” which is uhhhhhhhh BAD.

nobody knows what the fuck you’re studying and they’ll all say “but what will you ~*~*~do~*~*~ with that” and the answer is literally anything. This isn’t a Bad Thing, it’s just annoying to have to say it all the time. I tell people I doubled in philosophy and mathematics.

There’s a really high rate of burnout in students and alumni, which is why a lot of alums sometimes seem really unhappy and bitter about the college.

Why the graduation rate is so low:

I’d never actually heard of this before? I do know that a lot of people leave for various reasons (the college IS in fact culling itself, slightly differently all four years), including but not limited to: not totally having understood the model of the college, unexpected academic intensity, money, mental health, somehow not meeting the bizarre and constantly-fluctuating milestones of wildly different teachers. My incoming class was... 125 people I think? and I graduated with 96, which was not treated as unusual by other alumni or faculty.

PROGRAM IS A FUCK

Read Em All 1989

I am trash man

First of all, congratulations on your St. John’s-ening! It’s absolutely an unparalleled place and experience, and I wish you well! I can only tell you things from my own narrow experience, but I can tell you things I wish I’d known at the time. Also, all of this information is about four years out of date, since I’m A’15 and microcultures (is that a word? it is a word now) change incredibly quickly, especially in intellectual spaces and spaces with young populations. Some of it will still apply though!

First of all: GO TO GREEK ASSISTANCE. GO. GO TO GREEK ASSISTANCE! The Greek Assistants are lovely, helpful people and they are HERE TO HELP YOU! With one of the most time-consuming and work-intensive courses I have ever encountered. They will not think you’re stupid, and helping you helps them get even better. 

If you want a Program text from the library, get it early. They go like hotcakes. The library does not have enough copies even for everyone who doesn’t buy them from the bookstore. Like, go at least a week before your class needs the text (you can check in advance what seminar books you’ll need in the bookstore, they have a list for each year). If you can, splurge on that Complete Plato from Hackett Publishing, it is a sexy, sexy book and mad useful. 

If someone interrupts you during a mathematics demonstration, throw your chalk at them, I am completely serious. This is the only tutorial where this is permissible. 

The Johnnie Bubble is real and you will forget about the outside world. This is fine, and normal. 

If you are so unlucky as to be assigned Dreucker for a class, transfer immediately. He nearly made me drop out, fuck that guy and his terrible teaching style. 

Being a room Johnnie is fine. Do your homework, watch netflix, whatever. But do your reading.

Upperclassmen will be really friendly! They love freshmen, and befriending upperclassmen is a great way to meet people and get help with homework. Some of my best and most enduring friends are upperclassmen who adopted me.

The freshman dorms suck and I am sorry. The Program is racist and sexist as shit and that also sucks and is an inseparable part of Western philosophy. You cannot have Western philosophy without racism and sexism. Accept this. You do not have to like it, you do not have to agree with it, but is an integral and unchangeable and immutable fact about these materials. The only pure and free space is mathematics. 

As far as being queer and christian (I am sorry that I don’t know what your denotation of “christian(?)” means) I found St. John’s a pretty comfortable place to be a queer person. I know others who did not find it that way! You can join Pink Triangle, the LGBT+ group on campus, but my experience was negative (partly due to my own preferences and identity development). Generally people didn’t bother me about being queer, but I was very aggressively asexual and made sure people knew it. I also know a lot of people come out/transition after leaving or graduating from St. John’s, partly because it’s not worth the administrative hassle of transitioning while at the school, which is super unfortunate. 

You’re gonna meet a lot of more-intellectual-than-thou atheists. They will mostly be men, in my experience, and they will want to ~have a Johnnie discussion as fellow philosophers~ with you. This is just the “debating” that these dudes want to do elsewhere in the wild. You do not have to engage them, but you can if you want! I had lots of conversations that were low key dudes making fun of me, and also lots of conversations that were very thoughtful and influential to my spiritual and religious development, both at St. John’s. It’s a mixed bag.

St. Anne’s in the circle is a lovely, welcoming church that’s familiar with Johnnies, and very queer-positive. I highly recommend trying it, it’s where I and several of my friends went.