I am so impressed by the general level of erudition and intelligence on this board that I would not be surprised to learn that some people here are fellow alumni of my alma mater, St. John’s College.
I’m Annapolis, Class of 1984. Any other Johnnies?
And yes, this does belong in GD, because it is a question with a factual answer.
There’s also this one. Slightly more recent (1555 vs 1511), but at an older University, and on the site of an even older college (St. Bernard) founded in 1437.
Well I’m completely demoralized. First an error in the OP, then banished to IMHO.
John Mace: Right, it’s the great books college, but it’s one college with two campuses, not two colleges.
Yes, but since you didn’t participate in seminars on all of them, you couldn’t possibly have gotten as much out of them as we did. (See, I can be just as smug and condescending as the rest of you!)
Sorry, Truth Seeker, but seniority does not establish exclusivity, as Antonius Block has pointed out.
And although we colonials can’t compete with you Brits for age, I’ll just point out, as a matter of pride, that the predecessor of my St. John’s College was founded in 1696, making it the third oldest educational institution in the U.S., after Harvard and William & Mary.
Anyway, back to my original point: any Johnnies present?
(And it’s not a poll. I’m not asking anyone’s opinion about whether they went to St. John’s. I’m asking who did. So at worst it’s a roll call. grumble grumble.)
I almost was, did the whole applied-and-accepted-and-made-a-visit bit, but then UC San Diego decided to offer me a free education, so I’ll be going there in the fall.
My mom graduated from St. John College in Cleveland (note the lack of the possessive suffix). You’ve never heard of it because it hasn’t existed since 1969.
How many does that make now if we include this one in the total?
Delurking to say: Annapolis, 1999. The Graduate Institute. The standard agreement among us was that if we’d known of St. John’s four years earlier, we’d have been there as Undergraduates. Not a few of us contemplated returning as Undergraduates and starting all over. Thrilled to see other alums from my beloved alma mater.
To make this thread fit in IMHO, what was your favorite segment? Lit? Phil/Theo? Math/NS?
Either you asked “any other Johnnies?” (which is in fact what you asked), in which case the correct thing to do is say “yes” and close the thread, OR you are polling our membership to ascertain which ones went to St. John’s, in which case moving it was appropriate.
Your call. I’ll happily close this thread if the other interpretation was correct.
I hope this doesn’t get closed. I was hoping to hear other peoples’ impressions of the SJC experience; I’m just too shy to share mine before someone else does.
It changed my entire worldview. I went to St. John’s with my brand new BA in English, thinking that I (at least at a basic level) understood almost everything there was to know about the Humanities. I had my set beliefs about everything regarding God, Politics, Economics, Philosophy, etc. St. John’s pulled the rug out from under all of that, and I loved every minute of it. I walked through its doors thinking and believing one thing and walked out of its doors questioning everything all over again.
My undergraduate degree taught me how to think. But getting my graduate degree at St. John’s taught me the value of the questions themselves, and the value of the very act of questioning.
The end result is that I’m more liberal in some areas and more conservative in others. I realize that it’s Ok not to know. I learned that hardly anything is black and white. And I’ll never, ever again take for granted the divine acts of reading and philosophical contemplation.
Manhattan: Okay I take your point. I don’t spend as much time here in IMHO as it other forums, so I’m not as familiar with its conventions. And since people want to continue the discussion, please don’t close the thread.
Rilchiam: I’d love to tell you more about my SJC experience, but I’m kind of busy at work now, and I expect it could take me several hours to write a good post, so I hope you won’t mind waiting a few days or a week. (If it seems like I’ve forgotten, feel free to rattle my cage.) Short answer: very positive in almost every respect. Sorry your experience doesn’t seem to have been so good.