Journey of the mind

"Sometimes I look at the things I wrote and I think, 'That doesn't even sound like me,' " adds Flora Beckstrom. "Where does it come from? Like, who entered my mind? Maybe I'm having dinner with philosophy guests and don't know it."

By April, the students have read Neruda and Sappho, Jefferson and Descartes. They have written dozens of papers. They have debated whether God is a woman and whether JFK was a good president. One more student has dropped out by now, but 16 students are still coming to class each night — despite day jobs and new complications. One student's sister has just been sent to prison, leaving the student and her mom to take care of the sister's baby. Moeller has been hospitalized with respiratory problems and is behind on her work.

But everyone is feeling confident. And it's not just the positive feedback and their newfound voices that are having an impact, says literature teacher Metcalf. It's the ideas themselves: The humanities offer "hope and promise," he says, and, according to history professor Jack Newell, "they force you to examine your assumptions. ... You begin to live more consciously, to reflect on the decisions you make."

In philosophy class one night, the topic is existentialism and Jean-Paul Sartre's essay "Are You Free?" Bridget Newell explains Sartre's explanation of the difference between essence and existence. With a machine, its essence — its purpose — is imagined first, then the thing is created. But with people, according to Sartre, existence comes first, because there is no ultimate purpose. People, according to Sartre, are "radically free."

Sartre wouldn't say we choose the circumstances we're born into or everything that happens to us, Newell tells them. "But we determine what we become. We choose how we respond." Being free in this way carries a huge burden of responsibility, she says, and a certain anguish and forlornness. She bends over as she lists each burden, making her body sink lower and lower so that she is now walking like Groucho Marx.

Over on her side of the room, Moeller is taking all this in. "You would think freedom is something that's pleasant," she says. "But it takes away the excuses." Reading Sartre, she says, has made her question her own life. Did she end up homeless not because she was a victim but because of something else? After reading Sartre, she had to say to herself: "You made choices. Let's review them."

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On a perfect spring evening, as the sun lowered in a cloudless sky, the Venture Class graduated in a ceremony at Westminster College. Family and friends stood up and cheered as each name was read, and when Gina Zivkovic walked across the stage, her son yelled, "That's my mama!"