Spinster

I was talking with my friend Heather today, who attended the University of California at Santa Cruz. I’ve never visited the UCSC campus but I know that the school has a reputation for being a hippie school. Nothing wrong with that; my own alma mater has that reputation, too. Anyway, we got to talking about courses we took in college. I was talking about how I’m writing one of those lame touchy-feely papers for my reference course, and she mentioned that she had to write tons of those as an undergrad: UCSC offered courses like the Sociology of Love, Women in Popular Culture, a course on the Simpsons, one on the Grateful Dead, and one on the Muppets.

As an undergraduate English major, most of the papers I wrote were decidedly NOT touchy-feely. I wasn’t cracking the genetic code, but I wasn’t writing about how television makes me feel, either. I remember taking a gender studies course (that was my first mistake) and having to sit through a presentation that consisted of a mix tape of Ani DiFranco’s music. Worst. Class. Ever. Still, though, that was probably the flakiest course I took in college. There were probably other, much flakier classes being offered, probably in the Comm or SoAn departments, but I wasn’t on either of those tracks.

It’s always seemed foreign to me that people could watch TV or read magazines for college credit and/or a degree. The article that I have linked in the title of this post mentions that the study of popular culture can be made a rigorous academic experience, with connections made between hip hop and history, the Simpsons and satire. I’ve never taken a course on hip hop or the Simpsons, so I can’t say how rigorous or how easy such a class would be. I can’t help but think that these courses do not in any way indicate a real education.

And yeah, I know that, with my English degree and requisite courses in Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Virginia Woolf, my peers who have studied the exploitation of women in Cosmopolitan or the politics of the East Coast-West Coast rap wars or whatever will be making exponentially more money than I. Good thing I don’t care!