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What do
people new to
St. John’s find
most difficult to
understand about
the college?
Many people have
difficulty appreciating the
value of an education that
doesn’t “keep up with the
times,” at least in part
because they haven’t yet
grasped that the critical
analysis skills one gains at
St. John’s are timeless.
They are, in fact, best
honed by being trained on
materials that are foreign
to our current thought yet
that served as the
foundations thereof.
Dr. Patricia Sollars ’80
Fort Collins, Colorado
Associate professor of neuroscience,
School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences,
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
My own career may serve
as an example of the
difference I perceive
between the St. John’s
program and the usual
undergraduate education.
If I had pursued a typical
undergraduate education
in neuroscience and
graduated in 1980, nearly
every fact that would have
been “cutting edge” then
is by now mundane, if
not obsolete. However,
the skills I acquired at
St. John’s remain critical
to my scientific research
endeavors on a daily basis.
In what ways has
your St. John’s
education shaped
your life since
college?
The person I became at
St. John’s was a person
very much prepared for
the real world.
At St. John’s I learned
the value of questioning
conventional wisdom
and putting truth over
expediency. Perhaps
most importantly,
I became comfortable
with asserting my own
lack of knowledge.
This is a crucial part of
my work! There is an
overwhelming tendency
in the government to
rush to hasty answers
or rely too heavily on
old information. There’s
also a weirdly inflated
sense of personal esteem,
Ms. Larissa Deaton ’08
Arlington, Virginia
National security analyst, ANSER (analytic services for
national security)
as though admitting
your own ignorance is a
sign of some kind of
weakness. I approach
my work with the same
spirit I did every day at
school: I might not
know the answer, and
there might not be the
kind of answer I’m
seeking, but there’s value
in the question itself.
This attitude has helped
me tremendously and
has won high praise
from my boss. Part
of the reason I was
hired---despite not
having the “necessary”
master’s degree and
work experience---was
because I showed a
willingness to learn.