Go to St. John's college

I’m working to graduate early, but it doesn’t seem plausible for me to go to college in the fall. I just can’‘t imagine any other school I would want to go to, though. Even if I do have to take a year off.

I really hope I’m not making a mistake.

I finally did go – in January (‘07), to the Santa Fe campus. Not only that, but I managed to get the transfer application in on time and all my financial aid paperwork, so in a week I’m going to the Annapolis campus, where I really wanted to be.

This upcoming school year I will get to read and discuss the following books with some of the greatest young minds of our generation…

HEBREW BIBLETHE BIBLE: New Testament
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: “Caesar,” “Cato the Younger,” “Antony,” “Brutus”
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
MAIMONIDES: Guide for the Perplexed
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
KEPLER: Epitome IV
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: Introduction to the Analytical Art
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Third Symphony
SCHUBERT: Songs
MONTEVERDI: L’Orfeo
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

It’s official: in August, I’ll be moving to Annapolis.

While I think this is a very worthwhile goal the reality is it is not one that I am likely to ever accomplish.

If I do any post graduate work it will be at a more “traditional” school in a specific subject area.

always keep in the back of your mind how lucky you are to have an opportunity to learn and grow rather than be trained to do a job in modern America.

This is the dream school for many people from the time they first hear of it. I know it was for me.

However, it’s not exactly realistic for many people to attend. First, the money simply isn’t there. Second, my life went in another direction…

Still, it is always in the back of my mind. I’ll leave it on my list right after retire. Perhaps I will attend the master’s program some day…

They accept applications starting second semester of Junior year. So I am working on my essays and should be sending my application off pretty soon.

This school sounds amazing and I would love to go there. But it is pricey and I don’t know if I can get enough scholarship money.

I’m at the University of Tennessee right now. I would give almost anything to be at the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College. It’s mostly my own fault that I’m not there now… I’ll be applying this year, in hopes of getting the funding to transfer there next year. http://www.stjohnscollege.edu – it’s unlike any educational institute I’ve ever seen in the United States.