Ben St John - Classics

Ben St. John, a Classics major, has not decided on what he is going to do when he graduates.

"I am in school because I know that I should get a degree and so I have decided to study subjects that really interest me and I don't know, frankly, where that will take me. But at least I am learning the things I want to learn. One thing that I really like about the Great Books program is that it is giving me a reason to study subjects that interest me and to get something out of it."

St. John says that his favorite Great Books course has been the one on the Koran because it opened his eyes to the overlap between the Islamic and Christian religions. "If I had to pick a favorite class that would be it. I thought I knew about Islam before I took the course, but I really didn't know anything. Islam is much more heavily intertwined with the Judeo-Christian tradition than I thought. It prescribes great respect for Jews and Christians because they are all people of the book. In its view, the Bible is just an earlier version of the Koran. It doesn't really discount any of the earlier figures in the tradition. Mary is more exalted. There is a great commonality. I ended up doing my paper on Jesus in the Koran."