"The
humanities seminars in the freshman year of UHON really provided
me with a mindset and an approach to my intellectual life that
has made all the difference to my experience at UTC. Usually,
for small, rigorous and discussion-centered seminars, many students
need to wait till their upper-level classes in their majors,
whereas I was exposed to it as soon as I started college. The
curriculum and ideas of the freshman humanities seminars introduces
a way of looking at the world that tries to incorporate different
viewpoints and create a framework for making connections. It
helped me understand better how everything I encounter is a part
of a process, itself located in history.
"So how has this helped
me reinvent myself? |
Ajit with his purchases from the UHON Council's 2004
Date Auction, Darris
Saylors and Kelly Fulkerson |
Well, I think it is
easer to ask how it hasn't. Even when I watch TV, for example,
I find myself asking questions that I would not have previously
asked. Or I cannot think about the civil war in my own country,
for another example, without thinking of the first two books
I read for the seminar, Homer's Odyssey and Tim O'Brien's The
Things They Carried. It has helped me realize that college
is not so much about academic achievement, but academic experience,
an experience that is not merely confined to the classroom
or actual assignments, but that offers a way of living in the
world. It is this experience that UHON has given me that is
the most significant part of my college life."
Ajit
is a humanities: international studies major from Colombo,
Sri Lanka, and a true Renaissance man. He has been an active
member of the Chattanooga and campus communities since his
first days at UTC. He is a long-time member of the Housing staff,
serving first as a resident assistant and now as an Assistant Area
Coordinator of UTC Place. He has performed with the local band
Milele Roots and is a talented poet. His departmental honors project, A
City of Rumors, included a collection of original poetry
inspired by his experiences in his native Sri Lanka during
civil war. His serious commitment to scholarship and his intellectual
curiosity is such that Dr. Fouad Moughrabi invited him to assist
in teaching POLS 443 - Nationalism, a senior-level political
science course offered during the Fall 2004 term. Ajit plans
to explore another field in his graduate work by enrolling
in UTC's M.S. Psychology program in Fall 2005.
In January
and February 2005, Ajit spearheaded a tsunami relief effort involving
the UTC campus, Chattanooga community and Tennessee resources.
For more information about this effort, see http://www.utc.edu/Tsunami/.
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