HONS 295 – Love, Sex, and Friendship

Because I am a part of the Cormier Honors College of Longwood University, I have to complete eight honors courses during my time at Longwood. HONS 295 was my first official honors course besides my Longwood Seminar class.

I took HONS 295, or Special Topics, during the Fall semester of my first year at Longwood and had Adam Blincoe as my professor in the class. Every semester the topic of the class changes, and this particular semester it was entitled, “Love, Sex, and Friendship.”

Throughout the course, we read from various philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates, in addition to reading from C.S. Lewis’ novel entitled, “The Four Loves.”

Each day in class, Professor Blincoe would engage students in a discussion on our reading from the previous night and we conversed about topics such as family, significant others, sex, the different types of friendships, and more.

For the most part, it was a very interesting class, although the readings were difficult because I’m not really that much of a philosophy person.

During the class, we had a total of 14 reading quizzes, one for almost every reading, and they consisted of five questions based on the entirety of each text. We also had three papers over the course of the class: a Christian Love Reflection paper, an Erotic Love Reflection paper, and a Friendship Reflection paper. Each paper was due at the end of their consecutive units.

My favorite part of this class, however, was the Christian Love unit. Being a Christian myself, I found C.S. Lewis’ book and the readings from the Hebrew Bible very interesting and engaging. My Christian Love Reflection paper is also, in my opinion, the best assignment I turned in for the class.

In the paper, I was tasked with discussing the most important ideas and beliefs that the Christian faith followed. Some of these included compassion, service, sacrifice and familial love.

I have included a PDF of my Christian Love Reflection paper below!