Few freshmen would like to think about boredom, vice and want before classes even start.
But for the Class of 2005, it was these very topics that emerged during yesterday's Penn Reading Project, their first official academic experience at Penn.
Before coming to the University, all freshmen were required to read Voltaire's Candide, receiving copies of the book by mail.
Yesterday, on the last day of New Student Orientation, they attended both lectures and discussions focusing on Candide.
The book describes the adventures of Candide, who, despite suffering numerous misfortunes, persists in believing the optimistic philosophy his teacher Pangloss passes down to him. Candide eventually comes to question his beliefs.
Students listened to lectures given by Penn faculty members at Harrison Auditorium, Irvine Auditorium or Zellerbach Theatre.
Susan Fuhrman, Graduate School of Education dean, focused her speech on parallels between Candide and educational reform at Zellerbach.
Just like in Candide, reformers constantly look for ways to improve education, search for educational utopia and proceed with reform based on shaky evidence, she stressed.
Fuhrman concluded that the lesson provided by Candide in the end -- we must cultivate our garden -- is an important one for education reformers.
"It's instruction which is the garden that we must tend," Fuhrman said.
After the lectures, freshmen attended various faculty-led discussion groups to dissect the book on a more personal level.
Provost Robert Barchi began his discussion group by asking students whether they believed what happens in the book.
The provost compared Candide's somewhat implausible, exaggerated antics to those of the cartoon characters Popeye and the Roadrunner.
Barchi led the group through a lively discussion of different themes in Candide, including perfection and social hierarchy. The group also talked about the blind faith of Candide, who follows Pangloss' philosophy without question.
"The only way you can learn here is by questioning," Barchi told the approximately 15 students in his section.
While it seemed that many freshmen in attendance thought Candide had something valuable to offer, some thought that the book was overly repetitive at points.
"I thought it was pretty redundant after a while because I got the point quickly," Engineering freshman Magdalena Jonikas said. However, it "addressed some important issues."
College freshman Karen Blumenthal had similar sentiments.
"I didn't find it really inspiring or really fun to read," she said. But "I thought it had some good ideas about how people reason."
