by Brenda L. Johnson

Created on: June 27, 2008   Last Updated: November 12, 2010

The beauty of college is its ability to challenge our long-held beliefs in order that we emerge transformed. This transformation occurs through nothing less than the fire of struggle. It is as much the atmosphere, the time period in most college students' lives, and the newly found independence, as it is the intriguing classes and the people from all over the world that contribute to this new experience. During a time when we are declaring our independence and determining our beliefs, we either chose or are thrust into this environment of unknowns.

College was indeed a series of unknowns that culminated in a life changing experience for me. Not only did I experience my first independent relationship, but I also experienced a riveting challenge to my spiritual foundations as I underwent a reconfiguration of my entire self-perception. The struggle was to become a more mature, knowledgeable, well-rounded and emotionally intelligent young woman. The process was indeed a rites-of-passage. And yet the overwhelming emotion for the entire undergraduate experience was joy.

Scene I: Literary criticism class would pose questions of the relativity of truth and the role of poetry in Plato's Republic. Drawing a circle on the board, our teacher would place a dot in the center of the circle, which represented the center of human existence. Along the margins of the circle, she would write the names of all the groups that were Othered by this center, this power source. Imagine my surprise, when the "white man" replaced God as the representation and exercise of power in her diagram. Here I was all my life believing that God was indeed the Center of the universe. Apparently capitalism and democracy were stronger forces than a virgin birth, a resurrection, a holy trinity and the whole concept of salvation.

Now, it would prove disadvantageous for me to subscribe to such a theory wholeheartedly and without question. Particularly as a minority, it would be difficult for me to deny my humanity. Similarly, I would be disserving myself if I did not acknowledge the wielding of power by others in society. The point here is that I was introduced to a new perspective that may have been a part of my subconscious but had never been articulated or expressed in such a way. Knowledge was drawing my ignorance from that shadows to the lightexposing and excising it.

Scene 2: The senior thesis professor refutes the idea that there is an African essence. I argue that there is an African essence. Pulling

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