<p>As far as I can see, you’ve had some great feedback on this thread. Get off campus, study abroad, go ahead and check out other schools (I’d suggest University of Chicago as a place that still takes the Classics seriously), look before you leap, etc.</p>
<p>There is only one writer on this thread who knows what’s really in your heart. The rest of us are on the outside trying to look in. Most are taking you at your word about the reasons you want to transfer. They are good reasons; but then, you are obviously an intelligent young man and whether you present reasons or rationalizations, they are bound to be good.</p>
<p>Let me ask questions the answers to which I haven’t a clue.</p>
<p>As a gay, Catholic, mixed-race, fatherless young man who can’t discuss these things with his mother, are you deeply lonely? I’m not joking. Have you been lonely since before you entered Howard? Is the self-actualization, the intellectual stimulation and camaraderie you seek in the college experience part of an effort to deal with loneliness? Is the inability of others you’ve met at Howard, your professors, your debate team compatriots, your fellow students in class and in clubs - all of them - is their inability to connect in a way that satisfies your expectation, your hopes, a result of their nature or of yours?</p>
<p>Please, don’t mistake me. I have no answers. I am not making accusations. I have no idea who you really are or what ambitions or fears or curiosity or drives are contesting within you. I can only steer my own life by my own lights, but 60 years of experience has led me to conclude that such internal conflict exists inside almost all of us. From what you’ve shared about your life on this thread, I’d guess it also exists inside you.</p>
<p>If it’s accurate to say that your dissatisfaction with Howard actually stems from the students, faculty, and administrative policies of the school, then the question isn’t whether or not you should go. The question is where you should go.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if your dissatisfaction with Howard stems from a more fundamental issue that has roots deep in your life, then the question takes on even grater importance than this decision, and you’ll probably need more help to answer it than anyone writing on this thread can give you.</p>
<p>And now, at the risk of being impertinent and intrusive, I have one last thought.</p>
<p>It seems to me you have an opportunity here to do something profound in your life. You have made it clear there is a clash of culture and values between yourself and the general population of your school. Rather than trying to escape that experience, perhaps you should consider embracing it. I don’t mean something as banal as “learn to get along with others who are different from you”. I mean make studying that experience a personal research project, one that lasts throughout your college career.</p>
<p>Consider that the conflict between an individual and their society is one of the most pervasive themes in literature and in life. Who is the individual? You are. So who is dreamer2013? Dive deep into the question. And who are they? All of them. They aren’t all the same. Learn what you can. Watch them, talk to them. Interview them with a microphone and recorder. You’d be astounded the things people will tell you if they take you seriously and if you listen and ask good questions. </p>
<p>And read. Socrates, Jesus…you’re the Classical scholar, you find them. And don’t overlook the modern classics. Think Fredrick Douglass, Emma Goldman, Virginia Wolfe, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, the Beats, Martin Luther King. </p>
<p>And while you’re at it, don’t lose your sense of humor. There is great power and insight and intelligence in good humor. Try George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” or “Major Barbara” if you want a look at conventional thinking through a revolutionary humorist’s eye. And when you’re done with that, learn what goes on in the human mind when people think. There’s cognitive psychology, sociology, and neurobiology. Read Steven Pinker’s “The Stuff of Thought” and George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant”.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be at Howard to do this. You don’t really have to be in college, although free access to a good library is one of the great pleasures and a tremendous asset in life. (The internet is good for some things, but not for everything, Google and CC notwithstanding.)</p>
<p>So what’s the point? The point is that you will be examining your life and your own thinking in the context of the lives and the thoughts of the other people around you. It will give you a topic and a purpose when you wish to make contact with those people and it may offer a path toward the intellectual and personal relationships you are trying to establish. And it will give you an intellectual foundation and practical experience in dealing with one of the primary questions in human life: who am I and where do I fit in society?</p>
<p>Thus concludes my impertinent and likely irrelevant post. </p>
<p>Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best.</p>