Negative Stuff

Why I Would Never Recommend UMSL's Honors College, Pierre Laclede: Courses

There are 4 required courses for anyone who joins the Honors College: Cultural Traditions I & II, Freshman Composition (I loved this course), and the Junior Writing Composition: Writing in the City (with only two alternatives, Business Writing and Writing in the Sciences. ... I should've taken Writing in the Sciences. Could I have taken it despite not being a science major???).

Cultural Traditions (CT)

If you scroll down my MB, eventually, you'll find my rants over CT, but that was two years ago now, so... I'm not doing that rn, and I'm sure you don't want to waste your time doing that. Instead, let me give you a general understanding of why I hated the courses.

First of all, it literally destroyed my interest in other cultures. Luckily, most of my interest in the cultures I was already interested in (Japan, Germany, etc.) remains, but even some of my specific interest was hurt by that course (Egypt, for example). "Culture" is now a word that I wince at. It's literally a trigger word for me. Because of Cultural Traditions I alone, and CT2 made it even worse. (By the way, the point of the class was to do the opposite, I'm pretty sure.)

Second, it's not a course for anyone who doesn't want to read horrific, sexual, etc. content. We literally read a rape scene for CT1. (See the chapter after this about the Professors at the Honors College [not yet finished/posted] for more information on that. What I'll say here is that somehow, my peers thought it wasn't rape [or were just denying it].) There was a torture scene that we read in CT2. (But really, it wasn't just one scene.) Personally, I don't think school is a place to read smut. That's it. No thank you. So that combined with the horror we read... it was torture.

Third, it's offensive. This goes with Point #2, but it also goes farther than that. The apparent... value systems of the texts we read were oftentimes appalling. One of the texts in CT1 had a main character that encouraged women to abuse their husbands, for example. (This, I also reference in Chapter 2 of Why UMSL's Honors College Sucks, so a more detailed description lies there.) This woman was considered "beyond a pervert" by even me two years ago.

(For the record, my classmates were just as bad. I was continuously shocked that they didn't seem to care about how horrible the sh*t we were reading was. Which made my skimming of my Notes even better because not only was I like "wtf" [This is actually quoted from multiple spots in my Notes] about the texts, but I was also like "wtf, my classmates actually enjoyed this???")

Do I need any more reasons than that?

Now we arrive at Junior Composition. This is titled "Writing in the City" for a reason. Every essay in the course has to be about the city. And not just about, but focusing on the city.

Before I go any further, UMSL is a COMMUTER school. This means that I would assume that plenty of the students there don't have any experience and/or interest in urban living. I know I don't have any interest, not at this point in my life, and I barely know anything about cities, too.

Now... just imagine... writing 3 full essays about urban living.... One general argumentative essay, one critique essay, and one problem-solution essay. This means that you have to find evidence for those. Evidence for your claim in regards to city living. This also means that you have to have a full understanding of the differences between urban and rural and suburban living. Yeah. I personally can't draw that line between suburban and urban areas.

So WHY is that a required course?

Now finally, we arrive at the course options, which are DOMINATED by history/social studies/that kind of thing. I refer to the Honors Course Catalogs that I've collected and list EVERY course. (Note that you're supposed to take 5 of these in the first year and one of them every main semester after that, and that I, with my many interests, struggle to do so with the knowledge that morals are not common in their courses, but liberal points of view are prominent. Also, some courses are repeated, but you can't take 'em multiple times.)