Confessions of a Humanities Major

When I was in college, my favorite professor said once, "I became a Humanities professor because I like books with pictures in them."  He also told us to go play in traffic after class each Friday.  I'm not really sure how that fits into this story, but I think it's funny.

I started college as an education major with my emphasis on history.  Then I became a history major believing I should spend my time in college learning the material I wanted to teach.  And then I stumbled into a humanities course the spring of my sophomore year and quickly changed my major.  Within the humanities major at Stetson you picked three areas of study.  One of my areas of study was art history.

I took two or three art history courses.  Why they scheduled those classes for 9am is beyond me.  It was early in the morning, and due to the slides we had to watch, the room was dark.  This combination made it difficult to stay awake.  In order to prevent this from happening, I purposely sat in the front row.  I figured that the guilt of falling asleep in the front row would keep me awake.  Honestly, I wasn't bored in the class and it wasn't the professor, it was the environment.  This method worked about 90% of the time.

During grad school I took a 17th century art course.  And that winter I visited Rome.  During our trip we did the obligatory visit to St. Peter's and the Vatican Museum.  As I mentioned in a previous post, it was great to see the statues and paintings I had only seen in books, but really it was way too crowded a place for me.

We went to the Vatican Museum after St. Peter's.  We went from room to room looking at lovely art.  As we passed through each room there was a sign that read, "This way to the Sistine Chapel."  Ah, the one thing I was looking forward to at the museum.  After what seemed like the tenth room, and tenth sign, the whole event was becoming more annoying then exciting.  Finally, we made it to the Sistine Chapel.

**I did not take this photo.**

Here's my confession:  I wasn't impressed.  There was no standing in awe, or moment of breathless wonder at where I was standing.  Frankly, the room was packed with people.  There was a guy yelling at people to be quiet and to not take photos.  The ceiling is really high and I can look at the art in better detail in my books.

Ok, I feel better now :)