Jonathan Hollingsworth ’18 wanted to save the world. It took him halfway across it.
In 2012, at the age of 20, he packed up a few belongings and headed to Cameroon in West Central Africa.
He’d been fueled by a desire to do good as far back as he could remember – he was 5 when he emptied his piggy bank to help a child he’d seen on TV and a teen when he gave away his bed and took to sleeping on the floor of his closet. But he always felt he had come up short.
The year-long mission trip was meant to make a real difference. When it didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped, he captured the journey on the pages of a book. Then he began a new story at the University of Mary Washington.
That sojourn will end Saturday, when Hollingsworth graduates with a degree in philosophy, having finally found his calling.
He was still writing his story when he started taking classes at UMW in 2013 as part of a co-enrollment program with Germanna Community College, which lets high-performing students get a jump on their bachelor’s degree.
The mission trip had ended in disaster after just four months when much of the work he planned to do – like build a bakery to benefit orphans – disappeared. Even the guitar lessons he hoped to give to children with instruments he collected back home fizzled out. He tried to help other charitable organizations in the area but was forbidden.
When Hollingsworth made it back home to Spotsylvania County, 30 pounds had fallen from an already slender frame. He was diagnosed with clinical depression. He blamed himself for what he thought was a failure.
It was his mother, author Amy Hollingsworth, who suggested writing a book about how a desire to do good went bad. A book that would serve as a cautionary tale and a salve to others – and to himself.
They wrote it together. “Runaway Radical: A Young Man’s Reckless Journey to Save the World,” was released in February 2015.
At UMW, Hollingsworth, a book author at 24, went about his studies as if nothing unusual had happened. In fact, he said, “I didn’t tell anybody.”
He was already looking ahead.
He’d chosen Mary Washington for its proximity to home, for the small class sizes and professors’ personal commitment to student success. He’d majored in philosophy because he thought it would give him a strong foundation for law school.
But he no longer wanted to go to law school. He’d fallen in love with philosophy as a discipline, thanks to a course called Introduction to Logic taught by Assistant Professor Michael Reno.
“I got hooked,” he said, on the idea that philosophy – understanding the true root of a problem – was the only way to really solve it.
Philosophy, he thought, could be the answer to issues ranging from inequality to environmental destruction. He wanted to keep learning.
“He is one of the brightest and most engaged students we’ve ever had,” said UMW Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair Craig Vasey. “It’s like he could live off of philosophy, ideas, critique. His writing is exceptional; he can present the most difficult or obscure ideas in good, clear paraphrase, and put it to good purpose.”
It is no wonder then, that on Saturday, Hollingsworth will be named the Outstanding Graduate in Philosophy.
“I expect he’ll follow in the footsteps of over a dozen of our graduates, and join the profession himself after his Ph.D.,” Vasey said.
That’s the plan. This fall, Hollingsworth will head to the University of Windsor in Canada for his master’s degree. Next step: his doctorate.
He wants to become a professor – like the ones at UMW who taught him that to change the way you think is to change yourself.
And maybe, just maybe, the world.
