Good courses/teachers change everything.

I thought I hated literature and philosophy until I took a philosophy 101 course that I procrastinated until my final semester at UT.

It was basically two professors (one was Dutch that was co-teaching the course until he would transition to be a stand-alone professor) and a class of 12 students at a university where I was used to intro courses in 200-student lecture halls.

The enthusiasm of the professors was contagious. And they turned text that would have been boring / misunderstood if read on my own into lines that were couched in all sorts of humor and greater commentary about the world, and I was hooked. They taught me how to enjoy literature that otherwise would have seemed totally dull and dry and it was a real gift.

Over a decade later, I was at a bar and somehow Plato's Gorgias came up with a stranger and we both half-jokingly agreed that Callicles was right about the world. And I thought about how thankful I was for that philosophy class once again.

I often think that if we ever achieve an automated AI-driven society (unlikely, but bear with me), everyone will be a philosophy or literature PhD.

They're the only disciplines that make it fun to go to class.

Wow. That sounds interesting. Consider yourself lucky, haha!

Thanks a heap for this! Coincidentally, there's a course on the Divine Comedy starting today (http://dante.georgetown.edu/).

Ah, nice! Let me check it out.

> What I once thought was a retelling of the Bible, surprised me with its political nuances.

The Bible has surprising political nuances as well.

I raise.

All holy books have _unsurprising_ political nuances because their whole purpose was providing guidance towards stable societies during lawless times.

Ah, I see. :)