Stanford's required english courses are called, collectively, "Writing and Critical Thinking". My particular experience was that, despite being in one of the spiffier one-quarter Critical Thinking classes, it's content was largely a grammar review and the writing advice was basic stuff like "describe the scene in detail". Ah well. The writing topics were very open ended and I enjoyed writing most of this material.
Yes, it's about ping pong. It's about people playing ping pong to procrastinate.
This is about me watching a bunch of people playing truth or dare while drunk. Well actually, I was drunk and playing too. Pretty fun to read.
An attack on a Carl Sagan essay in which he thinks he explains why humans can learn everything. My attack was a bit feeble because I had to stick to a metaphor that I realized wouldn't pan out, but was too lazy to rewrite.
CIV, on the other hand, was horrible for me. Dear God look at how absolutely politically correct the title of the course is. We went through the usual ancient texts in which authors struggled with questions like "is there good in bad?". The saddest part was, here I am at Stanford, and my classmates were genuinely struggling with these issues. Well, I'm sure my greatest intellectual feats will seem similar in a few hundred years or less. I better not even describe the course any further, I'll get abusive.
Plato's cave allegory and Augustine's Confessions both depict a person going through a paradigm shift. This essay explores the similarity in the shift in thinking despite the total difference in what conclusion was arrived at.
Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy vs St. Augustine's Confessions. Portraying Augustine as a force toward medieval Christianity, and Boethius as a force toward fusing Christianity and classical reasoning.
"Christian and Pagan and Good and Evil in Beowulf"
Beowulf is pagan material, touched up with Christian themes. As such, both pagan and Christian conceptions of good and evil shine through and mix interestingly.
"Boethius: Christian Plato"
Essentially similar to what I was saying in the "Two Trends..." essay.
Augustine deserved Sainthood
If anybody did. He was totally honest with himself about what he had been, and he wrote a text to help the "sinners" along. Of course, the source of his ability to be honest about what he once was is his ability to view himself as righteous after the conversion. Still he one of the truest Christians I know of.
Dante's Scoldings
About what Dante's message was in Inferno. Political and in that sense not timeless, or all the more timeless?
Marx' Assumption, Nietzche's Guess
The essay topic was, is there a connection between politics, morality and science? Explore these connections in Nietzsche's Gay Science and Marx' Early Writings. I waste an opening paragraph on a not very well thought out analysis of what a politician is, and go on play Nietzsche vs. Marx on what society is and can be, with Nietzsche winning.