To every single person who has asked me this question, I apologize for implication that it was a ridiculous thing to ask. If you had asked me the question in high school, I would have been able to reply within the moment (Hint: Whatever had the fewest numbers), but now such a question is as bewildering to me as Quantum Physics or how Douglas Adams was off by a mere 5 numbers. When asked this now, I currently shrug my shoulders and say that I haven’t thought about it. But that’s a TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE LIE.
The answer to what my favorite class at Pomona is not one that I can give a simple number or title for. It’s a long, detailed explanation that you’re about to slog through and read because for some reason my inability to answer this question in one sentence is probably gnawing at you. The TL;DR for this one is, I have no favorite class. You’re gonna have to read to figure out why.
Still with me? Cool. The reason why I can’t say I have a favorite class at Pomona is because the way I measure my “favorite” is generally by how much something means to me. My favorite ice-cream flavor is Cosmic Crunch from Emack & Bolio’s. I only get it about once a year and it’s super meaningful every time I get to eat it. Same thing applies for TV shows (Community), video games (Chrono Trigger), movies (Rear Window), and sports teams (SF Giants).
All of my classes have been extremely important in forming who I am. From the classes that I’ve dropped (more on that coming soon to a Voices blog near you), t0 the classes for my major; they’ve all been instrumental in forming my Pomona experience and thus molding me into the person who is currently typing this sentence out. I may not have loved my language classes, but struggling and finding within myself the perseverance to continue working hard (or at least wake up at ungodly hours in the morning) has taught me a lot about myself. The meaning that I’ve taken from those kind of classes, much more than any of the material taught in them, has shown me aspects of myself that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to know.
Of course I have the classes where the subject material is right in my wheelhouse, the kind of classes where I often find myself waking up in the middle of the night with a new thought about the latest reading. Those would certainly be my favorites in the traditional sense, but the meaning that I’ve extrapolated from those is different as well. It’s the conversations that I had with my classmates and the friendships formed. It’s the office hours with my professors and the sense of having someone who is unbelievably brilliant taking the time to talk with me about whatever questions or thoughts I have. It’s the knowledge I’ve gained in the subject, but it’s so much more than that. All of my classes at Pomona College have taught me something about me. How I react to criticism, difficulty, and crisis. But also how I learn, grow, and who I am in the context of others who are as passionate and, especially, more knowledgeable than myself.
So I have no favorite class. Beyond just the meaning that my classes thus far have given me, I also have so many more classes to take here. It would be unfair to my future self, to lock him into a favorite with which he might not agree with once his time here is done. But I guess by that understanding, I couldn’t call cosmic crunch my favorite flavor of ice-cream, because I might just wind up taking a class that changes my perspective on ice-cream altogether. Does that sound ridiculous? It shouldn’t. Because all of the classes at Pomona are so much more than they may seem to be.