Looking back, PEAK was much different from what I expected. As a Kolbe student, I was ready to be bored by just reading and discussing the same things I had spent all of high school reading and discussing. But even though I’d already read many of the WCC books in the Kolbe curriculum (like the Iliad, the Odyssey, Huck Finn, Crime and Punishment), the in-person discussion method completely changed my experience of them. Having already read some of the works did help me out a little—but I quickly realized that I was by no means “done” with the liberal arts thing just because I’d had a brief taste of it in high school. Through discussion with other high schoolers from all over the country, I found things in the Great Books that I’d never even thought to look for. I felt myself growing as a person, even in one short week. PEAK was a combination of things I was familiar with and things I’d never encountered—and it blew my mind. We discussed poetry, we went canoeing, we milked a cow, and I forged friendships deeper than any I’d ever had, over only a few days.
When you read something wise, deep, and beautiful, that has hung around for a thousand years because it’s just that good, you might think it’s cool and maybe get something out of it. When you talk about it with other people, they might see things you didn’t and you might actually feel you learned from it—and this is the experience I had in Kolbe. But there’s something even more special about talking about that work with real people right in front of you, which is what I discovered on PEAK and have continued to rediscover every day with my classmates here at WCC. When you live with people day in and day out, braving the challenges of the backcountry with them, learning to survive with them, function with them, and eventually love them—then, not only the Great Books but the world itself starts to look different.
It's hard to describe. When I was getting ready to graduate Kolbe, I wanted to go to school for journalism. I thought I had spent enough time on classical education, and character formation or whatever it was useful for, and was ready to start my life. But I kept coming back to the feeling I’d had on PEAK, when I’d realized that I was missing something. That I was missing a lot. I thought I knew who I was and where I wanted to go, but really—as I discovered in a discussion about a random 19th century poem—I knew nothing at all. Like any good Catholic highschooler, I wanted to be a better person and a saint someday, but I didn’t know how. I wanted to learn and understand all the true and beautiful things people before me had discovered, but I didn’t know where to look. I felt like I was missing out on a lot of reality, and I was getting ready to just pass it by and start my life as a half-baked person.
WCC has just been one long mindblower, an extension of my incredible PEAK experience. As much as it could as a highschool program, Kolbe prepared me well. When I started as a freshman I was sharp in discussions (because of my online classes), fast with my readings (because of my hefty Kolbe assignments), and confident writing my papers (because of ALL those weekly papers!). But despite my advantages, I was still very challenged, primarily by my fellow classmates in discussion. Every day, as I read and discuss and go rock climbing and attend Mass, I realize how much more I have to grow and how much more there is to learn. Even now, as a junior, I haven’t regretted one single moment of being here at WCC. I’ve found everything I needed to find.
Written by Kolbe Alumna: Magdalena Mortensen, Class of 2026
Interested in Wyoming Catholic College? Join the Discipline of the Body, Obedience of the Mind: Wyoming Catholic College's Remarkable Education webinar on February 20, 2025.
