Blog Post #6: HumCore 1A in Reflection

It is currently week ten here at the University of California, Irvine, meaning that both finals and winter break are just around the corner. It is hard to believe how fast time has flown by, but, alas, fall quarter is coming to an end. Today is the final day of both my HumCore lecture and seminar class (until next quarter, that is) and I must admit that my experience in this class has been different from what I had anticipated it to be.

I don't know what exactly I expected HumCore to be, honestly. I think I anticipated it to be a lot like AP US History in regards to the depths which we would cover various historical subjects. Upon reflection, I realize that would be virtually impossible to accomplish in only 10 weeks. I appreciate all that HumCore seeks to accomplish. It is the Humanities Department's way of trying to expose students to as many categories of the Humanities as possible in the effort of inspiring them to possibly pursue one as a major. However, it is frustrating to me that HumCore is a three part class. It would be more convenient, especially for Humanities majors like myself who have to take this course to fulfill the requirements for my major, if we only had to take one of the three required sections. For one thing, not all of the topics interest me. Take this quarter, for example. I find Manifest Destiny to be incredibly fascinating and I love learning about westward expansion in the United States. However, I absolutely detest everything about Roman history; I find nothing about it appealing and I continue to hold that viewpoint even after taking this course (although it was pretty interesting to learn that the Greek influence in Rome was the first time in history that a conquered people group altered the culture of their conqueror). I also think that this quarter covered the most interesting subject matter out of the A, B, and C parts of this course. I did, however, enjoy that the Seminar portion of the class allowed confusing parts of the lectures clarified. In high school (or at least at my high school), students are told that teachers will not be available or increasingly willing to help you and that you will be alone in your effort to understand the materials presented to you. I have found that this is not the case.

While my view towards HumCore has not been greatly altered, my definition of the terms, "empire," and "ruin," have. When I thought of these two words, I would automatically think of war. I would think fairly exclusively of the Roman Empire and its conquests and failures. What I wouldn't think of is the metaphorical application of both empire and ruin. An empire can simply refer to a nation or person's sphere of influence and how it dominates the way people or nations live and think. An example of this can be found in America's fast food industry abroad and how Professor Zissos during one of our first lectures mentioned the McDonalds that stands across the street from the Parthenon. Ruins can represent the destruction of many different things from the physical destruction of structures to psychological downfalls like that of the magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians after he is tortured.

If there's one thing I learned from HumCore this quarter, it's the importance of perspective. Just as we discussed during the very first week of class after reading Edward Said's The Politics of Knowledge, both the reader and the author or, for the sake of analogy, the student and the subject at hand, are equally important in what they bring to the table of understanding.