Katelyn Cornett

How do I even begin to summarize two and a half years of growth? Great Books has been one of the biggest blessings of my life. I have been thinking this week about writing this, and I became overwhelmed as I contemplated all I have been able to learn about the world, people’s views of beauty, ideas about faith, and how I have been deeply convicted about my religious beliefs. The retreat aided me in summarizing all I learned and being able to apply it to my personal life through the individual studies we completed.  Throughout my journey to completing the Great Books program, I was challenged with the concept of being a blind follower. Acts 8:26-40 is about the Ethiopian who was reading about Isaiah. However, he did not understand the scriptures he was reading. When I read the passage the question, “How often do we seek guidance when we do not understand something?” As I look back on my own walk, I am convicted because for so long I was a spoon-fed Christian. I listened to my te...

               Salt is utilized as a preservative, and it also adds flavor to some of the world's favorite foods like French fries. It improves the taste of the food. Similarly, grace adds to the quality of our lives, but it has to be applied under the right conditions.   By distinguishing between living by cheap or costly grace in   The Cost of Discipleship , Bonhoeffer suggests that it is pertinent for Christians to evaluate their devotedness to the call of discipleship. In the end, costly grace preserves the church, while cheap grace harms the church by undervaluing God's gift of grace.             Bonhoeffer suggests that people live according to two interpretations of grace – costly or cheap – however, only one of them leads to forgiveness of sin. Bonhoeffer states that disciples who obey God's calling understand that, "Costly grace is the only pure grace, which r...

     On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius is a short treaty about the theology of Christianity written simply to explain Christ’s manifestation to humanity. Throughout On the Incarnation, Athanasius addresses many aspects of Christianity, including how the Jews lacked belief and how the Greeks mocked Christianity (84). People of this time were supplementing their need for Jesus with worldly objects, which only added to the void created by God’s absence. More importantly, On the Incarnation lays out the history of humankind and how God created them perfectly. Unfortunately, due to the fall of humanity in the garden of Eden, God’s perfect plan for man to live incorrupt in Heaven after physical death was ruined. Thus, as Athanasius illustrates, for God’s divine plan to be accomplished, it was requisite that he send Christ incarnate to teach God’s will and redeem the world from the evil they were supplementing to fill the void in their hearts that only God can suffice....

       People look into mirrors every day, but what do they see, and what do others see that they do not see in themselves? Dante utilizes the analogy of the mirrors to illustrate that as one develops knowledge and a relationship with God, they will begin to reflect more of his light into the world around them. Dante proposes people need to understand what they are reflecting through their life. He demonstrates this sentiment through his travels through the heavenly spheres. As he ascends and becomes closer to God, his understanding begins to change, and he becomes more aligned with God.       In Canto Two, Beatrice introduces Dante to the mirror analogy to demonstrate that God’s light is equally intense in each person, but how we perceive that light changes based on how close they are to God (2.97-105). The closer a person is in relation to God, the brighter they will seem to shine, but it does not change the radiance of God’s light or power. Bea...

(The board meeting room opens up and is filled with philosophy majors who have gathered to discuss their ideas and questions with a few of the members of the Board of Philosophical Writers.) BRADBURY: “The University of Inquisition would like to welcome our board for today’s discussion about philosophical questions dealing with human interactions. Today we have Mr. Dostoevsky, Mr. Lewis, Dr. Freud, and Mr. Tolkien. I want to thank each of you for joining us today, and we will begin by opening the floor. Does anyone have a question they would like to ask the board?” STUDENT 1: “Dr. Freud, will you explain why people today covet money and other possessions?” DR. FREUD: “The goal of human beings as I have come to discover is to eliminate pain and to bask in pleasures. All humans possess what I call an Id, Ego, and Superego. The Id is the pleasure-seeking part of our unconscious that directs our desires. The Ego is in the middle mediating between the Id and the Superego, whi...

How often do we hear of people becoming drunks after a bad relationship, losing a job, or after some other type of conflict with another party? We quite often hear about people diverting to alcohol as a form of escape. But, why do people revert to alcohol to divert their pain instead of facing it head-on? In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud proposes that suffering is a sensation that occurs in the highest degree among relationships between men and they utilize drunkenness as the greatest way to rid themselves of a sense of unhappiness.  So, what is the end goal of man’s life? Freud states that people “seek happiness, they want to become happy and remain so. There are two sides to this striving… [to eliminate] pain and discomfort” (Freud 15). Freud discusses many ways to eliminate pain and he says the utilization of the pleasure-principle is how people obtain pleasures from around them. However, we are dealing with the issue of eliminating pain. Freud says, “There are pe...

Getting the chance to speak to prospective students at the GB Accepted Students Day session was a neat experience. I did not visit Faulkner on the Accepted Students Day for 2018, so it was neat to experience the day from the other side and to meet a few possible new GB students. I really enjoyed getting to hear what the current students had to say about the program and how it has personally affected them in their college career and personal growth. I think it is important that current students and prospective students attend the sessions each year because that is where we first begin to bond with the new members of the family. The setting is very open just like it is in classes.

     According to studies done in psychology, children tell the truth more than adults. The question can then be asked, “Why do adults not also tell the truth as much as children?” Dostoevsky in Notes from Underground argues one’s truth is always self-biased and by utilizing Underground Man’s account of his life he demonstrates that people use romanticism to prevent disappointment from the reality of their own lives.      Dostoevsky opens the notes with Underground Man stating, “I am a sick man… I am a wicked man” (Dostoevsky 3). On the following pages, however, Underground Man says, “I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official… but as a matter of fact, I was never able to become wicked” (Dostoevsky 4-5). We immediately being with a contradiction of his character. The writer says one thing and then states he is lying. Dostoevsky uses the unreliable narrator to illustrate that a person’s words and views cannot always be trusted. At t...

     This year's festival was a true blessing. The singers were phenomenal and the variety of songs performed was interesting. I really enjoyed the group that sang the song about Elijah. The dynamics, energy, and creativity of the composition was entertaining and revitalizing.      The judges were super helpful too with their criticism. Our judge aided us on how to make Indodana more impactful and how to create a more mature tone with our voices. It has been a struggle to conceptualize a way to achieve the tone, but our judge gave us a way to visually gauge our tonality.

“If you've got troubles, I've got 'em too There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you” -Randy Newman “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story is an iconic song for any children who grew up in the late ’90s or early 2000s. The song frames the meaning of friendship with a catchy little tune that is unforgettable. The term friendship is one that today sometimes gets misused. People mistake having friends for followers and when they get in a bind they discover they did not have as many friends as they believed they had. However, that is not the case for all people because some people do form true relationships with people who would do anything to help get them out of a rut. In the Goblin Market, Rossetti argues through Lizzie’s actions to save her sister that people need others who love them to help them be redeemed from their temptations.  Relationships are a key part of life. Lizzie and Laura are two sisters who love each other dearly. However, they are ver...

           Pose! Click! Post! Instagram and Facebook have become two of the largest and most successful social media websites today. They allow people to post stories and updates about their lives and how great things are in the concept of their worlds. However, a majority of the time it is all a façade put on for the world to see because all people are aware of is that behind the filters and the inspirational captions, situations are not always what they seem. Though Instagram and Facebook are relatively new to the world, the issue of hiding one’s reality behind a front is not. Voltaire addresses the fact that people put on a facade of happiness through Candide’s interaction with the young happy couple to demonstrate that true happiness is an unobtainable virtue on earth since no one on earth is truly happy.               In Candide’s particular case, he sought for happiness by pursui...

     Until Mr. Maibach came and spoke to us concerning the Electoral College, I did not understand how it worked or the real purpose of it. He explained it this way, the Electoral college is a group of 538 electors. The electors represent two senators for every state which mean there are 100 electors to equal 100 senators for the states. The last 438 electors are divided among the states based on how many representatives each state has. The purpose of the Electoral College is to even out the voting across the nation to prevent a candidate from winning by popular vote of the nation versus congressional popular vote. There is not a law that says a state’s electors have to vote the same as their state popular vote, but the majority of the time they vote how the popularity of their state votes. To give a better illustration take California and Wyoming, the largest and smallest populated states in the country, if the first candidate won the popularity in California but d...

The heart is a crucial organ for the survival of all human beings. It supplies the body with fresh blood as the old blood flows back into the heart and is refined and distributed back out of several capillaries which carry nutrients to the other organs and the extremities of the body. Similarly, reasoning is an important aspect of life because it guides one and aids one in determining true and false knowledge and Descartes utilizes the analogy of the heart to prove this point.   Not all reasoning is sound. There is good and bad reasoning. Good reasoning according to Descartes is having “the power of judging correctly and of distinguishing the true from the false” (Descartes, 5). The opposite of good reasoning could be defined as the inability to make true judgments and determine what is true from what is false. Thus, people need to be able to reason for themselves, rather than accepting all things that are being presented to them because the presenter could lack the means t...