Preparation for Graduate and Professional Schools: Stories from our Alumni
Erin Daugherty, Class of 2014
When deciding between colleges, I was eager to find a college with a strong philosophy program and this is what I found at BC. My 18 year old self was set on attending law school after college and wanted to be as prepared as possible. I found that the philosophy program at BC prepared me well for the challenges of law school.
The philosophy program at BC challenged me to apply multiple philosophical approaches to the same scenario, to clearly articulate my conclusions and to be able to understand differences in viewpoints. These skills were critical in law school as legal analysis requires the application of laws to set facts and the ability to articulate and defend legal conclusions. Further, the discussion based courses at BC made me ready for the cold calling and discussion based course of law school.
I graduated from Notre Dame Law School in May 2018 where I was involved in the Student Bar Association and the Captain of the Notre Dame Barristers Trial Team. I passed the North Carolina Bar August 2018 and am working at Justice Matters working with victims of human trafficking and abandoned children.
Allison Thornton, PhD, Class of 2011
I've found the features of Benedictine's program that prepared me most to be the faith and reason sequence, coursework in Aristotelean and formal logic, and my senior seminar. The faith and reason sequence exposed me to the Great Books and the great questions raised therein in a historical and ideological context that made sense and afforded deep and careful thinking on the texts and ideas. This sequence of courses also played a very positive formative role in my development as an interlocutor and discussion leader. The courses I took in logic while at Benedictine have also served me very well. I studied Aristotelean logic for a semester and spent several semesters studying more formal systems, without which I would have been several steps behind my grad school peers and unable to keep up in my coursework and readings. Finally, the senior seminar was a very valuable part of the philosophy program. In it, I was introduced to a significant contemporary debate, its situation in history, and the major recent works in the conversation. I was also introduced to the way philosophy is done professionally--at least in the area of the profession that I find myself now--and was able to produce a successful writing sample for grad school based on my work in that course.
Kevin Kilcawley, PsyD, Class of 2008
I would not be the clinical psychologist I am today, had I not studied philosophy. Historically, these two disciplines were once wedded in the university; psychology had always existed as a branch of science housed within the philosophy department, and rightfully so. Afterall, the aim of my profession is to address the mental and behavioral well-being of the human person; psychology provided the tools of intervention, but philosophy provided the definitions to ‘well-being’ and ‘human person.’
Although each philosophy course contributed to my training as a psychologist, it was Professor Rioux’s course on ethics, and Professor Madden’s courses on philosophy of nature and philosophical psychology that defined well-being and what the human person is respectively. Working as a psychologist in private practice, clients come looking for direction to these questions i.e., how to be happy, and how to be fully human.Thanks to my training, I am able to point them towards it; helping them live a life in accordance with virtue and meaning, and not simply a life absent of psychological symptoms.
Although philosophy has served me well in my career as a psychologist, its true merits are found in my own human formation, and how its aided my office as husband and father. Formation is an ongoing process, acquired through knowledge and practice. Philosophy has been a faithful companion to both, helping me pursue what is true, good, and beautiful, and filtering out the rest.
