Recently, I came across a YouTube video in which someone was sharing their “personal curriculum” for the fall. I was really interested by this idea and watched a few more videos on the same topic.

The idea of a personal curriculum is that of designing a course schedule or syllabus for yourself similar to what a university professor would design for students, but of course, you can choose content that is of most interest to you. For instance, maybe there are literary novels that you’ve had lying around for ages that you really want to read, or even an entire run of a show that you want to re-watch. Your “classes” could include learning a language or working on a skill like crochet. I did notice that all of the videos I found on this topic were by woman, and nearly all of their ambitions involved the humanities. More observations to capture my interest.

I have definitely wondered for years whether I should have enrolled in graduate school to get my post-baccalaureate degrees, or just done something like this for myself around ten years ago. Especially since I have come full circle and find myself doing the identical job that I was then, and learning Mandarin and conducting literary research on the side (which I was not doing then). I’m sure a lot of people with similar inclinations as myself wonder about such things. Maybe people even wonder about what is worth learning or struggle between passions and an investment in a career that “makes money.”

Well, I don’t know about graduate school now, because honestly, it seems like education has changed a lot in the past several years, but I think I managed to squeeze in when it was good and got something really good out of it. It’s simultaneously the sublime Mont Blanc of my life and the deepest, darkest shadow of my career that has earned even a jeer from a prospective employer in a job interview (thankfully never hearing from them again). I was privileged in being able to afford to go to graduate school to follow my passions and then find a job afterwards, even though most prospective employers may have considered it a disadvantage to me. Back in the work force, I try different things to keep my scholarly candle burning, and that’s why the personal curriculum caught my attention. I will say, for what it’s worth, that I have infinitely more time for research and scholarly growth in the humanities in my after-hours as a microbiologist than I did in my one-year stint as a non-tenure-track professor, so I’m glad I didn’t spend more time than that trying to “use” my post-baccalaureate degrees.

Autodidacticism has a documented history going hundreds of years back, but when I started thinking about it, I remembered the opener of Charlotte Smith’s 1788 novel Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle.

With no other notice from her father’s family, Emmeline had attained her twelfth year; an age at which she would have been left in the most profound ignorance, if her uncommon understanding, and unwearied application, had not supplied the deficiency of her instructors, and conquered the disadvantages of her situation.

Mrs. Carey could indeed read with tolerable fluency, and write an hand hardly legible: and Mr. Williamson, the old steward, had been formerly a good penman, and was still a proficient in accounts. Both were anxious to give their little charge all the instruction they could: but without the quickness and attention she shewed to whatever they attempted to teach, such preceptors could have done little.

Emmeline had a kind of intuitive knowledge; and comprehended every thing with a facility that soon left her instructors behind her. The precarious and neglected situation in which she lived, troubled not the innocent Emmeline. Having never experienced any other, she felt no uneasiness at her present lot; and on the future she was not yet old enough to reflect.

At every turn, Emmeline reflects the ideal human of her time. She is not only highly intelligent but also highly sensitive, qualities enabled by a strong intuitive faculty. She is considered illegitimate by her father’s family and is thus neglected, living nearly forgotten under her paternal uncle’s auspices. The exceptional wit and logic Emmeline shows in her future trials is presumably a product of her self-education undertaken at her own natural propensity for learning.

Her mind, however, gradually expanded, and her judgment improved: for among the deserted rooms of this once noble edifice, was a library, which had been well furnished with the books of those ages in which they had been collected. Many of them were in black letter; and so injured by time, that the most indefatigable antiquary could have made nothing of them.

From these, Emmeline turned in despair to some others of more modern appearance; which, tho’ they also had suffered from the dampness of the room, and in some parts were almost effaced with mould, were yet generally legible. Among them, were Spencer and Milton, two or three volumes of the Spectator, an old edition of Shakespeare, and an odd volume or two of Pope.

These, together with some tracts of devotion, which she knew would be very acceptable to Mrs. Carey, she cleaned by degrees from the dust with which they were covered, and removed into the housekeeper’s room; where the village carpenter accommodated her with a shelf, on which, with great pride of heart, she placed her new acquisitions.

The dismantled windows, and broken floor of the library, prevented her continuing there long together: but she frequently renewed her search, and with infinite pains examined all the piles of books, some of which lay tumbled in heaps on the floor, others promiscuously placed on the shelves, where the swallow, the sparrow, and the daw, had found habitations for many years: for as the present proprietor had determined to lay out no more than was absolutely necessary to keep one end of the castle habitable, the library, which was in the most deserted part of it, was in a ruinous state, and had long been entirely forsaken.

Emmeline, however, by her unwearied researches, nearly completed several sets of books, in which instruction and amusement were happily blended. From them she acquired a taste for poetry, and the more ornamental parts of literature; as well as the grounds of that elegant and useful knowledge, which, if it rendered not her life happier, enabled her to support, with the dignity of conscious worth, those undeserved evils with which many of her years were embittered.

Emmeline’s library could be a dream rendered by a dark academia ambiance video or photo shoot today: a young woman nearly alone in a crumbling castle discovers a library of ancient texts that is being overtaken by nature. As she explores the volumes, her companions are soft-spoken birds that have taken roost in the vast, abandoned room. Her natural intelligence leads her to discern and select an impressive array of the works to create her own personal curriculum placed in her teacher’s room. The content of these works serves to strengthen her mind and spirit through the series of dramatic trials that she will suffer throughout the course of the novel.

Implicit, then, in this gothic romance in the Age of Enlightenment, is the idea that the wisdom in these literary and philosophical works will sustain Emmeline against the trials of life. Could it be that people today are starting to feel that way? Is this why they are choosing so much humanities-based learning in their personal curriculums? Because even if the humanities can’t “make money,” these topics offer us intellectual and spiritual fruit to strengthen us against our cultural wasteland.