Interim – Life on Campus

By Allyson Green ’21

While it may be cold, January is a time of restoration for many St. Olaf students. Being able to focus on only one class removes some weight from our shoulders and helps us prepare our minds for the spring semester. Many SoAn students, like myself, found ourselves in Professor Tom Williamson’s Life on Campus class, which met for about 3 hours every weekday. As you may guess, this course discussed college campuses in an anthropological viewpoint, and as a bonus, there were multiple field trips off campus to other schools in Minnesota. This included the University of Minnesota, Macalester, St. Thomas, and Carleton – along with a guided tour of our own campus! 

You may be wondering – what is the point of Oles touring their own campus? Well, while there were a few First Years in the class, many of us hadn’t officially toured our campus for a few years. Because of this, we all had formed our own opinions about the buildings, people, and classes (amongst other things), so it was interesting to be reminded of the reasons we came to St. Olaf, and compare them to the reasons we stayed. In fact, a question that kept popping up in class was “compared to what?” 

For our final, Tom allowed us to be creative and explore a broad topic that related to campus life. I wrote 19 pages about the purpose of Art on Campus, both here at Olaf and other schools. There was so much to write about, that the general consensus was that the 20 page limit was not nearly enough to cover every aspect we wanted. This paper was not difficult to write at all, as many people were genuinely interested in their topics and enjoyed doing the research. 

Of course, I saved the best part for last – this was an UNpaper, an UNfinal, an UNproject. What does this mean? It means that the guidelines were not strict. This (un)paper was not about challenging our minds, or stressing us out. It had the purpose of allowing the students to explore and learn about a topic that helped them understand another aspect of campus life that had not been covered in the month. As for my unproject, I discussed chapels (stained glass!!!), Christmas Fest, art museums in schools, landscaping, and even the idea of artistic intelligence. Tom allowed us to express our personality in our paper, which was another relief – so much easier to write (and, supposedly, more fun to read)!

Though we were sad to move on, we now have the ability and inspiration to pay attention to colleges and universities (and other institutions!) and compare them to what we now know. This course opened our eyes and minds to other points of view (including those of other professors/faculty), and I think it’s fair to say that we all will see our school in a new light.