Humanities - Junior Year and Post Tour

When I decided to fulfill my internship requirements at Mountain last fall I knew it would mean I would have to put off my third semester of my humanities requirement until my junior year. I knew when that semester came I would HATE it, considering the humanities classes are some of the most rigorous classes Milligan has. Class four days a week, countless pages of reading, and a dozen hours of studying for each exam just doesn't sound like much fun. And it's not. Especially considering how I'm not a big fan of history, and I'm certainly not a fan of art. Add all this to the fact that everyone I'm taking the class with is a year younger than me, I wasn't super stoked whatsoever for this class. I might have complained about it to everyone I came in contact with the first week back on campus. Maybe. 

I mean, I'd spent the first month of this summer touring Europe. I'd experienced the stuff I was learning about. I'd been there. I'd breathed in the Parisian air. I'd walked the streets of Rome. I'd explored the museums of Germany and France. I'd watched an opera outside the Vienna opera house. Why did I have to go back and read about it all in a book? DUMB.

But I needed to graduate, so I needed to take this last humanities class. So I am. And you know what? I'm so glad my academic circumstances of the past year have forced me to take this semester of humanities at this time.

Before the tour I didn't really care much about history. Or art. AT ALL. It had always been my least favorite subject in school, but I was encouraged to go on the tour for "the experience"... to travel the world for a pretty cheap price. So, I did. Even while I was there, I didn't care much about the academic side of things. I thought the art was endlessly repetitive. A lot of the history sounded the same to me. Kings. Wars. Murders. Religious intolerance. Yada yada yada.

But now I've seen it. Now I've first-hand seen the art of Raphael, the Arches of Rome, the palaces of Louis XV and the Hapsburg monarchs, the column inspired by Trajan, and now it actually interests me! I have a story for almost every place that comes up on the PowerPoint during humanities lecture, and that challenges and inspires me to pay attention. Because even though I may not have known much about it while I was walking the streets of Western Europe, I learned some then and I'm wanting to learn more now. 

As I was sitting in class today reminiscing (rather annoyingly, I presume) to those around me my experiences with each of the monuments and art pieces on the screen, I thought to myself, "When would the ideal time to take students on the humanities tour be? After they've completed the program? Before they begin the program? How about after their first year of humanities courses?" After a while of debating my own mind, I still couldn't decide. What I was certain of, however, was how grateful I am for many of the seemingly inconveniences life throws my way. Thanks, God.