It's all Greek to me

When I was signing up for classes this semester, I decided, “Hey, I know what I’ll do. I’ll take Greek and Roman mythology! I love that stuff and I already know tons about it.”

It’s something like this, right? But more incest.

But then, like all desirable classes, it was full and I had to find something else using our lousy registration website, Banner (warning: not PG. And probably not as funny if you’ve never used Banner). I ended up picking Greek Archaeology and Art because even though the course title is synonymous with “pretty old Greek stuff that was buried for a few hundred years”, it filled two of my eleven General Education Requirements, which means I won’t have to take Intro to British Literature or something like that. Because liberal arts educations mean that you need to know stuff about Shakespeare even if you’re a neuroscience major.

The only problem so far is the teacher. He seems like a totally nice human being who is genuinely passionate about what he does. But he also kind of reminds me of the Catholic priest from my hometown—you know, the one who caused me to invent a holy drinking game. He just talks and talks and talks in monotone, while useless slides flip quickly by in the background.

By “useless”, I’ll give him credit that he kind of knows how to use Powerpoint. The slides are semi-organized and he doesn’t have trouble trying to change between them. On the other hand, he doesn’t ever put any text on the slides, so lessons tend to go like this:

Estimated elapsed time: 20 seconds.

This is kind of a problem for everyone who writes at the speed at which most humans are able to write. Because we have to figure out how to remember which art piece he is talking about, and simultanouesly write down everything he’s saying because there isn’t really a hard copy of the notes he’s giving us.

Also, the book is next to useless. I bought mine used because the used copy was only $22 and twenty-two is my lucky number. I clearly didn’t anticipate what “used” would mean, because I definitely wasn’t expecting Chapter Four, part of Chapter Six, and pages 29 through 132 to fall out.

Clockwise from upper left: pages 29 to 132, Chapter 6, Chapter 4, the rest of the book. Not pictured: disappointment.

My other used textbook, which is for Physiological Psychology, is pristine apart from a little bit of highlighting. I’m especially cool with this because I think that biopsych is the most interesting topic in the world. My book agrees with me, apparently, because it even says “Biological psychology is the most interesting topic in the world” in the first chapter. No joke. It’s even all italicized. And then it goes on to say that other people who say similar things about their areas of study are wrong.

Anyway, my method for remembering what my Archaeology professor was saying is now drawing. I write down whatever he says and then I draw the art on whatever it was that he said it about, because sometimes “boar fighting a lion!” isn’t really enough of a description for me to match it to a specific piece. I’m definitely not a trained artist but I have to say that it might be time for me to abandon neuroscience and start a path of becoming an art restoration expert.

Recently we have started learning about statues, which I believe is going quite excellently.

Smithsonian Institute. Call me.