Remember some of those things we had to do in school that we have never had to do since? I went to college, majored in English, taught in public school and community college and have worked in the Union County Public Schools for many years, but never since high school have I had to conjugate a verb or diagram a sentence. I’m sure that you, Dear Reader, can remember many other things you had to do in school that you have never used elsewhere in life.
Actually, indirectly I have used what I learned in those elementary and high school English classes when I conjugated verbs and diagrammed sentences every time I write an article or complete a report for work. Over the years of my teaching I have been asked numerous times by several students, “Why do we have to do this?”
Presently, the short answer is that the Tennessee State Department of Education or the Tennessee Board of Regents requires this material to be taught to you in the prescribed way. I daresay in every occupation there are things people are required to do to achieve a desired goal. Every participant might not see the relativity or purpose of the activities as meaningful; however, if nothing else, completing them does help achieve a goal or arrive at a necessary purpose.
When I was an undergraduate student at Lincoln Memorial University in the early to mid-1980s, I wanted to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in English with a certification to teach secondary English and history. One of the things I had to do was take three psychology/sociology courses.
One of those courses was educational psychology. This course was mandatory for a degree in education. I could see the relevance, as I would be working with students. Educational psychology would help me begin thinking of ways to most effectively teach students utilizing several different learning styles.
I also needed two additional psychology courses. These courses were termed “electives”. Perhaps you will remember those from your high school years. Everyone had to have a certain number of courses to graduate. Each full year (two semesters) of one course was equivalent to one course credit. When I graduated high school, I had to have eighteen credits to get a high school diploma. Of the eighteen credits, some were written in stone (e.g., four full years of English). The remainder were “electives”, courses that were not required but could be taken to fulfill the number of credit hours mandated. I don’t remember any of the possible electives being very unusual. Some of mine were civics, Spanish I, Algebra II, and Typing.
In college, some more unusual courses were offered. For my second psychology requirement, I chose a course titled Marriage and the Family. This course explored all the “ins” and “outs” of marriage (or remaining single) and discussed several different kinds of marriages and living arrangements than the traditional heterosexual arrangement of “one man marries one woman and they live happily thereafter forevermore”. We discussed marriage contracts and cohabitation as alternatives. There wasn’t the emphasis placed on what have become more prevalent lifestyles today, particularly as same sex marriages were not legal at the time. For my class project, I put together a family scrapbook.
My second psychology elective was highly unusual. This class, as well as the textbook for the course, was titled In Search of Self. I, at the ripe age of twenty, scoffed at the name of the class, as I deemed I had never lost myself—therefore, I had no need to find myself.
I had heard about this class from others who had taken it. The strangest thing I heard was that students in the class were required to do was to blow up condoms like balloons and bat them around the room as if they were volleyballs. This activity was supposed to relieve sexual inhibition. Somehow I failed to see the connection, and thankfully the section of the course I took did not include this activity, hilarious though I’m sure it would have been.
Our particular class required lots of reading from the textbook. Each student had to keep a personal journal, much like a diary, of the assigned activities at the end of the chapters or articles. The one activity that sticks out in my mind asked that I stand naked in front of a mirror and write a love letter to my body. Get real! Of those of you who know me, can you imagine me doing such a thing? Maybe you can, but I assure you, I did not stand nude in front of a mirror. I did manufacture a love letter to my body, which ended with the required pledge that went something like this:

Dear Body,

I pledge to give you the same care that I have given you thus far in life.

Sincerely,
Ronnie Mincey

I don’t remember exactly what I said in the love letter, but I do remember the instructor’s note to my pledge:

Phooey! Won’t listen to your own love letter!

I wonder what I wrote to my body? Now I’m going to have to go back into my college notes and retrieve that journal so I can read my love letter to my body. Perhaps I might publish that letter in a future article if it’s not too demeaning. I wouldn’t hold my breath were I you, Dear Reader.
Another activity I had to do in this class was be paired with someone in the class that I did not know. We each had to lead the other, blindfolded, somewhere on the campus for a prescribed number of minutes, then reverse roles and return to the classroom. This activity was designed to help us develop trust in others, particularly strangers. This activity was not too bad. It was far better than the activity that other sections of the class had to do, freefalling backward into a partner’s arms. You can forget that one for me! Being my luck, my partner would have to sneeze about the time I stared to descend.
The course requirements demanded perfect attendance to prevent points being taken off the final grade; however, each student was permitted to miss one class to avoid the activity most dreaded. I chose to skip the class that involved my feet to be tickled by another. I still don’t know what was the purpose of that particular activity, nor am I, ever have I, will I ever be interested.
Interestingly, though I finished that course with an “A”, it seems the older I get the less sure I am that I have found myself. I also seem to be getting to the point that I can’t remember what I’ve lost. Woe is me!

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 24
What do you call a bee that can’t make up its mind? ANSWER: A MAYBE
QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 25
Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. What is it called today? (See next week’s article in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)