In order to become well-rounded individuals, all college students should be required to take courses in which they read poetry, novels, mythology, and other types of imaginative literature.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.

Students may wonder, after they enter the college, why on earth they have to continue studying literature. After all, they have finished a general literal education of nearly ten years in junior and senior high and there seems no need to prolong that cultivation since as college students they are now focusing on study of one certain field. And it appears more unreasonable to make the imaginative literature part of the university curriculum due to its plausible detachment to the earthly life, especially students’ future lucrative careers. In spite of all the doubts that may be held, there’s definitely tons of reasons to justify the college education of imaginative literature and for more or less the students could be more roundly developed from that process.

Firstly, nothing could compare to the imaginative literature in terms of unveiling the possibilities of human life. Any person, given his birth, education and social status, would follow his own unique path of life. Although the way of different people constructing their autobiography diversifies, for any single individual, a limited life span has dictated that there cannot be too many possibilities to try out. Another fact that leads to this lack of ampleness of life experience is the predominance of professionalism in most field of career. Due to the considerable input of reaching high proficiency in one certain field, it costs too much for a professional to completely discard his former pursuit and turn to another one. Both the mentioned reasons have shackled individuals’ exploration of their life map, and the shackle, however, could be broken by the working of imaginative literature. For one thing, just count how many writers are continuously depicting a different picture and imagine what a huge library those pics sum up to. Even though one writer’s scope may be limited, all the workers of words throughout the world and history will surely unfold a panorama. For another, imaginative literature works, different from the non-fiction ones in nature, are based on the excitement of human imagination and may amount to the most lawfully free creature in the world. Being allowed to stay unaligned with the common sense, traditional thoughts or any truths in the objective world, imaginative literature is able to present the world in a far more colorful way, which can add tints to any boring daily routine of merely black and white. The effect of unlocking possibilities could be spotted in lots of cases, no matter for the readers or the writer him/herself: J. K. Rowling has built a London of magic for the kids with her broom; with the help of Odyssey people are confirmed that there could still be a hero sculptured by all those adventures; and there’s a saying that those giants of magic-realism have drained the possible ways of profiling an individual’s life.

Secondly, unlike all the scientific researches based on reasoning, imaginative literature provides a humane way to study the humanity. There’s no scarcity of studies dealing with the nature of human in the academic world, which, although perfectly conforming to reasoning and logic, show a sign of cruelty when facing any heart consisting of flesh and blood. For instance, in the general study of psychology, people are treated as the observable objects in laboratory experiments and their behaviors, instead of being sympathized and understood, are recorded and deciphered. What’s worse, the study of "big data" has crazily placed everyone into the general population, who is indifferently judged as being "on the curve" or "off the curve" and deprived of any personal distinction. Although the reasonableness of those scientific researches should be undoubtedly acknowledged and greatly advocated, people still need another perspective to access humanity, a more emotional and gentle way which treats a person just as what he or she is born to be. The way is to study the imaginative literature. In imaginative literature, all the stupid mistakes and pitiful tragedies could be justified, since those are not what a life should be, but what life is. People are not computer programs and do not always function with rules. They make irrational decisions and thus lead to failures, which could not be anticipated by any scientific model, yet could be grasped by a simple storytelling. That’s why the great works of imaginative literature, though having gone through the passage of years, still have their merits in today’s reasonable world.Ordinary readers, like their fathers and grandfathers, shed tears when Hamlet raised the question of "to be or not to be", since no technology could resolve that problem and the sorrow conveyed by his story incessantly hurts. Ramond Carver has so skillful captured the most delicate despair and vulnerability of people, even those conveyed in a simple sigh or a short eye contact, that he creates an illusion that those hearts would surely be neglected, if there had not been his writing, and then only left broken.

Concededly, the strong effects of imaginative literature may create an illusion for the students which may be deviating from the real world. For example, a female student who is obsessed with the Chinese poetry of Song Dynasty (poems at that time feature the beauty and sorrow provoked by hopeless love) may blindly attach her future romance life to doomed sorrow, and thus form some groundless anticipation. However, any person’s perception of the world consists of direct and indirect experience, and no one can guarantee that either of the former two could always be precise. Life is a process of constant "assuming, experiencing, and correcting". As long as people are alive, they keep perceiving the new while correcting the imprecise old. The correction takes place from mutual directions between the direct and indirect experience, so that the existence of imprecision is not a fatal problem since it could receive amendment. Therefore, any deviation from the reality created by imaginative literature could immediately be realized and taken in with critical judgement, as long as the student not only stays in the literal world.

To wrap it up, college students could reap great benefits from the study of imaginative literature, so it is necessary to make it an indispensable part of college curriculum.