Thousands of people attend college every year, hoping to gain a successful job in the field they are studying in. Yet, majors only actually require 40-60 credits, leaving the student taking a majority of classes outside of their chosen field. In The Loss of the Creature, written by Walker Percy, a huge message is that taking classes outside of the major will indeed lead the student to become advantageous in their career. There are two major problems highlighted in Percy. One of them is that the student is at a loss of sovereignty and the other is that many courses are taught information with unnecessary factors involved. For the student to become the knower again can occur from the education outside of their major. By taking other classes not necessary for one’s major, they will become successful in learning how to learn, regain control over failing classes,
The first advantage of taking classes outside one’s major is that the student will become an excellent learner. By taking so many classes and not just the 40-60 credits, it forces the student to sit in several classes. The student may not necessarily remember every detail they learn in every class, but they will know how they learned. A person never stops learning, no matter how old or experienced they are, and this is why becoming a learner is so critical. Walker Percy wrote, “It is only the hardiest and cleverest of students who can salvage the sonnet from this many-tissued package. It is only the rarest student who knows that the sonnet must be salvaged from the package” (Percy 4). The many-tissued package is also called the educational package, which is the information being taught to a student with several media involved. Medias such as surrounding noises, technology, and the teacher can all affect how one grasps the idea. Percy believes that if a student can remove all the media, then they are learning. This is a challenge and does not come easy. Taking the classes not directly related to a major gives more opportunity for a student to learn how to learn. Students must practice and through experience, will ultimately achieve it. The classes that may be deemed unnecessary or pointless, are potentially helping the students on becoming expert learners, and eventually experts in their field.
Secondly, taking multiple classes can lead to failure in some. As a student fails a class, their learning gets weaker, which causes their loss of sovereignty. Students cannot control the number of credits they must take, but the one thing they can control is how they take them. They then regain their power by deciding what they’re gonna do, taking the class to the best of their ability. Walker Percy wrote, “ a sovereignty of the knower—instead of being a consumer of a prepared experience, I am a sovereign wayfarer, a wanderer in the neighborhood of being who stumbles into the garden” (Percy 5). No student is prepared to fail a class, so when one does fail, they have to regain control of their ability to do well in classes. Like a wanderer, no one knows exactly how to bounce back from failure until they do it. Percy wrote that he stumbles into a garden, something beautiful that he did not mean to find. This is how the student will feel once they find their way back into the class, passing on their own terms.
