Within weeks of settling into the college environment, several myths are shattered and the reality of AU life comes to light. Much like the idea that your university will have some school spirit or the notion that you will get a boyfriend (unless you're a guy), the illusion that in college, you get to pick "whichever classes interest you the most" will soon be exposed as not unlikely to damn near impossible.
This is due in large part to the General Education program. For a school so focused on student satisfaction, it is hard to understand why this rigid program exists. Understandably, universities need to provide students with a well-rounded education that prepares them for the intellectual challenges of the "real world." However, it escapes me why one simply cannot leave college without having investigated the powerful strokes of Mondrian but is totally prepared having taken finite math, after which the student has a somewhat working knowledge of addition but must still cut muffins into pieces when doing fractions.
Admittedly, my dissatisfaction with the Gen Ed program is partially my own fault. I have never been what one could call a fine arts person. After my high school art teacher realized that I was incapable of reproducing anything I found in the natural world, she gave me special permission to create my own version of art and supplement it with written word. I painted abstract squares with black paint and wrote little descriptions of all the depressing things in my life they represented. Sure, I unnerved my peers and my art teacher, but the important thing was that I passed art and never had to take it again. That is, until college.
AU wants me to be a bit more artistic. I was given the choice for the arts curricular area between the fun, creative, hands-on Cluster 1, and the not-as-fun, more bookish, "understanding art" Cluster 2.
Somehow, freshman year, I decided that instead of watching other students get high and finger paint for 2 hours and 40 minutes twice a week, I'd prefer to write 15-page papers about substance-induced finger painting and its greater implications for society. And, because of our unique cluster system, I have been unable to switch, meaning that since freshman year, I have been writing papers about gender in movies and memorizing camera angles all while my Cluster 1 counterparts construct sculptures from empty beer cans.
I suppose it's because if you say you're not so artistic, AU wants you to really commit to that decision. It wants to keep you from having an artistic epiphany during your sophomore year.
Besides the inexplicability of why you can't switch clusters or why your arts and culture education should come solely from 10 prescribed courses, there is the whole matter of why they are required at all. Something like 70 percent of AU students study abroad. During my year in Europe, I soaked up enough pretentious art knowledge for hundreds of cocktail parties and/or hangout sessions at the "Dav." Looking at the same paintings I saw on a slide show in a classroom that I paid 10 euro to see live just a few months ago was redundant and not nearly as exciting.
So before demanding that AU succumb to more radical changes that would make it more mainstream - like, say, getting a football team or having some semblance of equal gender distribution - let's start with something that is hated by all, something that is incredibly easy to fix. No one has ever said they have taken "a really awesome Gen Ed" unless it's incredibly easy and requires no textbooks or attendance. AU should face the fact that I, like many others, am content to draw stick figures for the rest of my life, all the while thinking that modern art is silly because even a 6-year-old could make it.
Olga Khazan is a senior in the School of Public Affairs and writes a social commentary column for The Eagle.
