Symposium
Before this post, first welcome our fist editor in the blog, Croc. He would be posting on this blog platform as well. So this is both an announcement and a blog, as I have promised to him that I would finish a post before his scheduled first post.
Today was the official due date for the symposium paper, and I have already submitted mine. But I haven't really talked about symposium yet, and I always procrastinate. Not today, though. I would be as punctual as Emma’s senior year. The timing is also perfect, since today is the submission day for the full paper, after months of research and rounds of feedback from different teachers and judges. So I just want to write down my thoughts on symposium, and sorry I don't have my humor with me on this post.
Merriam-Webster defines symposium as:
- a: a convivial party (as after a banquet in ancient Greece) with music and conversation
b: a social gathering at which there is free interchange of ideas - a: a formal meeting at which several specialists deliver short addresses on a topic or on related topics
b: a collection of opinions on a subject (especially: one published by a periodical)
c: discussion
The "convivial party with music and conversation" version is, regrettably, not the one we got, though we did get minigolf the next day.
I remember Dr. De Vries reading this definition aloud at the board of advisors meeting, with Adams or Naomi sharing what symposium had meant to them. It was February. Juniors were still stuck underground while the seniors were combining their work into the first integrated paper. Several months earlier, I had written to Mrs. Oloko and Mr. Belk asking whether symposium could be expanded to include more science, arts, or other topics outside social science. The answer at this meeting was vague: there is no limit on topic selection, but the core is still social justice. They did offer the possibility of an "honor symposium," which could include outside research covering other aspects of the topic, while BTA symposium itself would stay the same.
That was actually my second impression of symposium. I had attended Symposium Night since tenth grade, my first year at BTA, but Symposium Night is really just a small fraction of what symposium does, and at first I didn't think it was such a big deal. Back in China, given how many people there are, it is not hard to find an academic gathering where the speaker faces a much larger audience for a much longer period of time. Why would this be such a big deal for BTA?
Humanities and literature began to show both their charm and their fangs in junior year. Around then, a Chinese parent approached me, asking me to be the representative to push for change. Her argument: as international students, why should we compete with native English speakers on social science? We should play to our strengths, which are STEM. That is how I ended up in that room with the board of advisors, feeling slightly upset but also motivated to pioneer the "honor symposium," to be the first in BTA history.
When symposium actually started, however, things were different. It would have been nice to do more outside technical research. It would have been nice to find a tutor with a professional background in it. It would have been nice if the deadline didn't collide with college applications and cross country. Sadly, none of these were true. It was just a long course with different phases of assignments (some of which felt repetitive), and it became such a norm that we even forgot why we began.
Symposium has always been an interesting course to me. It is the most BTA course, but also the least BTA course. It fulfills history credit and Bible credit, and it is a culmination of close text reading from English, historical skills from humanities, and biblical and philosophical analysis from Bible courses. But it is also the least BTA course, and at times feels more like a college course. In a BTA schedule where most assignments are due the next day and teachers will fight for an extra minute of class time, symposium has assignments due in months, and we all know exactly what the final deliverable looks like. It is even self-study college, because there are no teachers and no materials. All you have is yourself and your time management skills.
So it is not hard to understand why people either love it or really hate it. It is an alien in BTA, a course that is supposed to be the fruit of everything you've done here, but is also fundamentally different from everything else, taught by some of the most familiar teachers we have. Different people bring their own conceptions of symposium, and their own expectations.
In a way, symposium is also a tragedy. Everyone tries to bring their vision into this giant that is supposed to contain everything. It has social justice, history, academic research, analysis, writing, speaking, oral defense, philosophy, Christianity, lenses, time management, and even the STEM I tried to bring in. It has the glory of BTA academics, with just too much attached, making it a swirl that drags everyone in it down. When we look back, we have even forgotten the original reason we set off: to deliver a short address and exchange ideas. How much do we know about our classmates' topics and ideas? How much time did we actually spend enjoying the pure joy of sparks of thought, of researching not for the sake of something else? So many things are inside symposium that we can barely see its original shape anymore.
Symposium, at its origin, is a gathering. BTA symposium, by the end, is a weight.
Symposium was meant to be joyful. BTA symposium taught us how easily joy can be buried under everything we ask of it.