My Personal Liberal Arts Education

A couple years ago during lockdown, I applied at a college in Queensland to do a Liberal Arts degree. For reasons I won’t go into, it didn’t work out and I sadly watched the door close on me. I’ve wanted to go to college or uni for years now, particularly to do a history degree. But in recent years, my interest in the liberal arts has grown.

I was homeschooled, and I think it appeals to the homeschooler part of me. I love the idea of studying and learning from the great books of the past, the books that have made the West great. I love the idea of being taught by Augustine and Socrates and Dostoevsky. I think it’s important to know them and to keep their ideas alive. I love the idea of mastering different subjects, from literature, to history, to politics, to music and art, to theology. I want to be well read and well educated.

So, I came up with an idea. If I can’t go to college, I’ll create my own liberal arts education. I’ll read deeply, study great books, listen to lectures, think and write. I have come up with eight subjects: literature, history, psychology, art & music, language, philosophy, theology, and economics & politics. I then created ten modules, each with two or three of the above subjects in it, to work through, one module at a time. Each of the subjects is divided into topics. For example, literature is divided into the topics of novels, drama, poetry, memoirs, and history. I have sourced books and lectures for each subject and listed them under each topic. I have more for some than others! For example, I have lots in literature and history (they are my subjects after all!) and few for philosophy and psychology (I’m open to ideas, by the way!). On the surface, it looks more like a reading and listening list, and it is, and I’m not necessarily working through it in any particular order. But I am trying to have something going from each of the assigned subjects at a time.

I would really like to start or be part of a group of people whom I can not only read these books with, but also discuss them. I think amazing things happen when we can bounce ideas off each other and learn from each other. Perhaps that is the future of my Literary Friends Society. We’ll see. 🙂

I’ll keep you updated on how all this goes. I’ll probably also be publishing articles on various subjects on here in the near future, so you can look forward to that.

Well, that’s all I have for now.

Courage & hope,

Caitlin