{"id":42,"date":"2007-05-02T16:06:21","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T16:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/index-6\/katharine_klotzbach\/"},"modified":"2013-06-25T14:59:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T19:59:17","slug":"katharine_klotzbach","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/speeches\/katharine_klotzbach\/","title":{"rendered":"Katharine Klotzbach"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Phi Beta Kappa Student Address<\/p>\n

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Katharine Klotzbach ’07<\/p>\n

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April 19, 2007<\/p>\n

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Good evening, everyone. To begin, let me congratulate new initiates to Phi Beta Kappa and thank all of you for letting me share my thoughts with you tonight. I have to admit, I feel a little sheepish being up here, because when I received my initiation letter last fall I didn\u2019t even know what Phi Beta Kappa was. I saw the Greek letters, the mysterious symbol and the word \u201csociety\u201d, and my imagination went into overdrive. I immediately had visions of secret handshakes and secret meetings in the bowels of Rolvaag. I thought maybe we would even get secret matching tattoos. These prospects deeply excited me. <\/p>\n

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Well, I was right about the handshake, but little else. Phi Beta Kappa, if, like me, you didn\u2019t already know, is the nation\u2019s oldest honor society. I\u2019m talking really old: it was founded in 1776. I did the math \u2013 on a calculator, since I am an English major \u2013 and was 231 years ago that five scholars at the College of William and Mary decided to form a society in which they could freely discuss any topic of their choosing. (And, as mentioned earlier, it was a secret society with secret meetings \u2013 which is pretty cool.) Eventually, though, Phi Beta Kappa evolved into what it is today: a not-so-secret society that still promotes free thinking as it is achieved through a rigorous liberal arts education. It also serves to honor individuals who exemplify that ideal \u2013 individuals such as yourselves. <\/p>\n

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At this point, you still might be wondering what you\u2019re doing here. \u201cFree thinking? Liberal arts? I mean, I get good grades, but what does any of that have to do with me?\u201d Well, I\u2019ll walk you through it, starting with the concept of a liberal arts education. That should be a concept we are all familiar with. \u201cLiberal arts\u201d is a St. Olaf buzzword, and we\u2019ve heard it many times tonight already. Even first years toss it around casually at their corridor meetings \u2013 at least I did. But I\u2019m guessing that we do not really stop and think about what \u201cliberal arts\u201d really means. Okay, I know what you\u2019re thinking. You\u2019re thinking, \u201cUh-huh, liberal arts means I have to take Beginning Pottery, Lutheranism 101, Fitness Walking, and thirteen other GEs before I actually get to my major\u201d (or, in the case of many of you here \u2013 majors). And, sure, that may be partly true. We might say all those classes put the \u201carts\u201d in \u201cliberal arts.\u201d <\/p>\n

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But I would like to focus on the \u201cliberal\u201d in \u201cliberal arts\u201d, because I think it provides us with a better definition of what we\u2019re doing here. Obviously, when I say \u201cliberal,\u201d I\u2019m not talking political persuasions. Nor am I using it in the sense of \u201cI like to spread a \u2018liberal\u2019 amount of peanut butter on my sandwich\u201d \u2013 even though I do. Instead, I mean \u201cliberal\u201d in the sense of \u201cbroadly based.\u201d And, to me, a \u201cbroadly based\u201d education is not just comprised of a myriad of arts \u2013 from philosophy to trigonometry to rock climbing \u2013 it also includes a myriad of thinking skills. <\/p>\n

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Clearly, we\u2019ve all mastered the basic academic thinking skills. The capacity to remember all those muscle groups for your Anatomy exam, or the ability to comprehend four-dimensional space, or even the perspicacity associated with selecting just the right \u201cGRE word\u201d for your English literature essay. We are all proficient in the thinking skills that have helped us succeed in the classrooms of St. Olaf \u2013 and these skills are important, because they\u2019re part of the reason you\u2019re here tonight. <\/p>\n

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So, what\u2019s the other part \u2013 the other thinking skills? Well, I can tell you they have nothing at all to do with GPAs or exam grades. (That\u2019s what the Dean\u2019s List is for.) In the spirit of the original founders of Phi Beta Kappa, what remains is less a set of thinking skills than, put simply, a more holistic thoughtfulness. A thoughtfulness that extends far beyond the classroom. A thoughtfulness that allows to you to critically examine global issues, make ethical decisions, defend your political stance, or even meditate on the nature of faith and religion. Thoughtfulness is careful, deliberate thinking \u2013 free thinking. It is not strictly academic in nature. It falls under the category of wisdom. You are here tonight both because you have demonstrated excellence in academic thought, and also because you have proved to your professors that you are a thoughtful individual, in a wide array of settings \u2013 in a liberal arts setting, we might say. You are someone who loves knowledge in all of its forms. <\/p>\n

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So, now that you know why you\u2019re here, take a moment to be proud of yourselves. Do it \u2013 right now. Okay, now that that\u2019s taken care of, I would invite you to take another moment \u2013 or a lot more time than that \u2013 to be grateful. Grateful that you attended a college that values liberal arts and encourages your thinking inside and outside the classroom; grateful that you had professors who both nourished and noticed your success in a liberal arts setting; and grateful that Phi Beta Kappa is here to celebrate and support those settings, while also giving proper honor to those who flourish within them. Welcome to Phi Beta Kappa, new initiates, and once again, congratulations, all! <\/p>\n

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Phi Beta Kappa Student Address Katharine Klotzbach ’07 April 19, 2007 Good evening, everyone. To begin, let me congratulate new initiates to Phi Beta Kappa and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":0,"parent":32,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-42","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}