Alumni on ECLA
Diana Marian, Romania
Attended: Academy Year 2002/03 & Project Year 2003/04
Currently: PhD student, Political Theory, New York University
Before I joined ECLA, I had already experienced a few good years at a major public university. I saw myself as having some of the important skills that prepare a student for the usefulness of life - a decent mastery of my discipline's academic jargon, a reasonably analytic mind and some doses of sarcasm to supplant the lack of the rest.
But then I ended up at ECLA - a revolutionary, and by most standards, an antiquated place. A place which, in spite of the wide range of disciplines of its faculty, had some coherent and unfashionably concrete ideas about education. A place that professed a peculiar suspicion against mental props of all kinds - whether in the shape of ideological mottos, fancy slogans or received shortcuts. A place with doubters and seekers who insisted on seeing the world in terms of problems rather than methods. A place where no degree would grant you anything by default, whether exclusive access to truth or a privileged place at the cafeteria table. Finally, a place with a strong sense of community, built around equals with a rare capacity for serious thought and just as serious sense of fun.
After a year of ECLA, my possession of an academic jargon felt more like a handicap than a virtue. My previously 'analytical' mind seemed, in retrospect, a mere sleepwalker through a jumble of received ideas. And in the middle of it all, I was gaining friends about to become lifetime friends, a hopeless infatuation with Berlin and a constant awareness that I was living through the best years of my young adult life. Three years after ECLA, part of a major institution of higher education in the United States, I am still holding on to those unfashionable ECLA things. And those ECLA teachers and lifetime friends are still my signposts for how well I am doing.