20 Best Fundamentals Questions

By Milena Pross

March 1, 2015

The “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts” concentration is an interdisciplinary program in which a student poses a question about human existence and spends the next three years attempting to answer it. As they formulate their own questions, applicants to the major may consult this list of questions posed by past and present Fundamentals students. Included are some of the most rigorous and most challenging questions we’ve ever had a student take on—it’s amazing to see what they were able to tackle as undergraduates!

1. Am I going to live forever?

2. Am I my own sorority?

3. What is a question.

4. Were the American Girl dolls right?

5. Am I the exception to gravity?

6. Is financial responsibility real? How do I get a job? Are there forms to fill out? Help.

7. How high can I climb?

8. Could it be any colder?

9. Why will no one hire me?

10. Why am I so angry?!

11. Is it “fundamentally” wrong to burn down an American Girl doll factory?

12. Is it “fundamentally” wrong to kill?

13. What day is it?

14. What even?!

15. How do laws work? Is democracy just?

16. Why do we do anything?

17. What is the relationship between dolls and the fundamental laws of decency that govern our society?

18. How much blood was there, really?

19. Do I deserve to die? Isn’t life imprisonment a fairer sentence for what I’ve done?

20. What if I’d taken the easy road and just become a housewife in a quiet, pretty suburb?