Letter from the editor What is the Core? The answer to this question is different for everyone. For some, the Core is a mandatory series to classes to be struggled through. For others, the Core is where they met their first friends. Whatever your opinion may be, there’s no doubt that the Core is one of the defining characteristic of the UD student. These liberal arts classes provide us with a common language. In this issue of the Avant Guard, we hope to showcase some students’ reflections on the Core. Please enjoy! -Judy Sommer
A call to action Student Foundations is looking for new members! If you would like to join, please pick up an application from the Office of Advancement. You could help produce editions of the Avant Guard, organize events on campus, and more!
Labor credits Cover………………….….……………………….Michael Fazi Printing…………………..………………………..Jeff Richards Chief Editor…...…….……..……………………...Judy Sommer Avant Guardians….…..Alex Santillan, Therese Phan, Tara Polk 2
Table of contents Freshman Year………………...………………………...4 by Philip DeMoura Fumbling Freshman…….……………………….……....5 by Mary-Catherine Scarlett Shade……………………………...…………….……....6 by Lydia Martin Song of the Bacchae, or, A Groundhog Anthem….…….7
by Michael Simmons Musings on a Regretful Decision…………………….…8 by Patrick Callahan On First Looking into Lattimore’s Homer…………….10 by Anonymous
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Musings on a Regretful Decision Though my memory sometimes fails me, and past events become a blur, this remains vividly in my mind. It was in early May of my freshman year, when the foreboding doom of final exams had culminated in one last weekend for studying. Classmates fretted about ending the semester on a high note, and while this was certainly on my own mind, I had another
concern on that fateful spring Saturday. Marvel, the modern cinematic giant, had just released Captain America: Civil War into theaters. Finding friends willing to postpone their review sessions to watch a modern Achilles beat up a modern Agamemnon, was difficult, much to my chagrin. “You’ll have all day to study tomorrow!” Me. “That won’t be enough.” The Class Collective. “It’d be four hours, tops.” “I could see it once finals are over.” “I can’t wait that long.” With no one to go with and no car, I looked up theaters off the DART, finding one in Northpark Mall off the Red Line. Anyone at UD should be familiar with the janky – but oh-so-convenient – train that is the Dallas Area Rapid Transit. It got me to the theater by, I don’t know, eight o’clock? That seems reasonable. I had plenty of time to purchase a ticket and sit in serenity before the trailers began. At some point halfway through the movie, or perhaps two thirds of the way, the thought occurred to me that I had no idea how late the DART ran on a Saturday night. I dismissed it for a little while until, realizing how much I would not like to journey back to campus without the ease of the light rail, my fears got the better of me. I decided to step outside the theater and look up the schedule on my phone, but I was getting no
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reception. Like a fool, I left the movie early and, and went back to the DART station. If I knew then what pains the night ahead would bring me, I would have watched through Captain America’s relinquishing of his shield. Had I been on any other line that night, I would have made it back to campus in a breeze. Instead, that darn Red Line (bless its soul) closed at 10:30 that night, leaving freshman me stranded twelve miles from our beloved Braniff tower. My previously unreliable cell phone still would not load anything faster than its battery would die, and so, after a couple phone calls made in vain, I used the last of its power to search directions to campus. Three hours, twelve miles, and a police patrol later, I was deposited in front of Madonna in a haze. In telling this, I want to show my gratitude to all who turned down my offer to watch an innocent movie on an innocent Saturday evening, nearly two years ago. If you
had gone with me that night, you may also have experienced the walk of your life, but we would not now be pals. Our friendship would have gone the way of Iron Man and Captain America.
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On First Looking into Lattimore’s Homer by Anonymous Based on “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats Much have I study’d the works of old, And many goodly books and philosophies seen;
Round many third-floor tables have I been Which students in duty to Braniff hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Lattimore speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into their dreams; Or like proud Hatlie when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Aegean – and all his teens Look’d at each other with wild surprise -Silent, upon a peak in the Peloponnese.
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Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. -Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t!
Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he realizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the
-William Shakespeare, The
beasts. For other living things to be
Tempest
ignorant of themselves, is natural;
Faith is ultimately a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit. -John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion
but for man it is a defect. -Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. -John Milton, Paradise Lost
The perfection of the effect demonstrates the perfection of the cause, for a greater power brings about a more perfect effect. But God is the most perfect agent. Therefore, things created by Him obtain perfection from Him. So, to detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power.
-St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 11
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