Vol. V, Issue 1: Fall 2006
My Core Story
by Holly Naylor

My first-day impression of the Core was not very good. Having come from a rather wimpy education system of rural New Mexican mining villages, I sat down in the Tsai Center with 500 strangers moping over the fact that CAS 105 had just placed me in a remedial writing class. An innocuous-looking professor took the stage in front of me. Over the next ninety minutes, I sank lower and lower in my chair as he boomed into the microphone that, unlike the scholars of ancient Greece, our generation of students was ignorant, lazy, spoiled and basically worthless. Then came the discussion section: read this entire book and write a paper on it — by the day after tomorrow.

I went home, and I cried. A bit dramatic, I know, and I did calm down once I saw that my oversized copy of Gilgamesh was essentially a poem in large print. But the lecture was a challenge; the professor was goading us to prove him wrong. That entire first semester in the Core was completely overwhelming for me: never before had I been pushed so hard to read, write about, and understand so many new concepts. My remedial writing class truly paled in comparison. After finishing that last final, I knew that if I could make it through the Core, I could make it in any academic setting.

I pushed through the program over the next year and a half, sometimes reading every word of every book, sometimes slacking off then regretting it during finals. The Core quickly became more to me than just classes. I moved into the Core House, made many of my closest friends through the program, and ended up choosing my major because of an inspiring Core professor. At the end of the two years, I still felt my Core education was not finished and decided to start my own Core organization, the Core Current Affairs Association (CCAA). (Note: The CCAA holds events every semester for you to meet and hear the world’s top experts talk about current events. We’re even talking heads of state here. Don’t miss out!) I essentially hung around that office until my last day in Boston.

To be honest, few days have passed since then when I have not used something I learned in the Core. When I was buried under thousands of pages of reading each week as a master’s student, understanding all the references to books, theories and historical events whose original sources I had read in the Core made my studies a lot easier. Today, as a teacher in Beijing, a spontaneous explanation to my students of why long hair is associated with rock music and rebellion becomes a lecture about the ‘60s, Locke, de Tocqueville, and the roles of citizens and governments in society. A discussion about Bird Flu becomes a science lesson about genes and memes. When I read the newspaper, see a movie, or just talk with another random and fascinating person I meet in my travels, I think back on that first day of college and laugh. How dull, how absolutely superficial would my appreciation of the world be without the Core? A Greek scholar I still may not be, but amidst the chaos of the world’s fastest developing society, I can definitely hold my own. DI

Holly (Core ‘02) completed a BA/MA in Cultural Anthropology in January 2005. She is now teaching English and working as a freelance magazine writer in Beijing, while studying Mandarin on the side. She can be reached at hollycnaylor@yahoo.com.