Deficiencies

Every once in a while I wonder what I am doing at LeTourneau. Although I am certain that this university was precisely what I needed as a freshman, I cannot help thinking that I am now being held back in several respects.

LeTourneau is an engineering school first and last. It is respectably appointed in a few other disciplines, such as computer science, teacher education, and business. But it has only two full-time history professors. The student body is intelligent enough, but really bright students of the liberal arts go elsewhere.

The best liberal arts courses at LeTourneau are certainly the courses offered in its tiny honors program (a fledgling — even tentative — institution). I think it telling that honors engineering students have the opportunity to take advanced history courses that are closed to history students who are not part of the program. An electrical engineering major in the honors program gets a chance to take Historiography; no history major outside the program has that privilege. Meanwhile, I can sleep through my ordinary history courses and still make As. I mean no offense at all to my history professors, but they know as well as I that they are teaching history to welding students.

If I want to specialize in medieval European history, is there anybody at LeTourneau to whom I may turn for advisement? I am not aware of anyone in particular who could help me; unfortunately, that happens to be an emerging interest of mine. To understand Renaissance history, I would probably turn to the Department of English instead of History/Political Science. For Ottoman history, I would talk to a particular Bible professor before going to one of my history teachers.

I need to be thinking about graduate school already. I feel absurdly underprepared. My ambitions are grand enough — a degree from the University of Chicago would be a nice start — but I may be better credentialed as a student of business administration than as a student of history.