Choosing a Major

Choosing a major is exciting. You have before you four years in which to focus in on any course of study that most passionately tugs your heartstrings. There will most likely be no other point in your life that you can devote to say, Abstract Art Composed at Zero Gravity, African Drumbeating, or Politics of Moldavia in December 1992. Yes indeed, at Carolina , the possibilities are endless. (Disclaimer: The aforementioned courses of study are not currently listed as officially recognized majors at UNC, but you could probably wade through a swamp of bureaucratic paperwork to obtain approval to study them.)

After taking four years of Latin in high school and discovering a love for Greco-Roman history and mythology, Classics seemed like a dream of a major for me. What other department would allow me to glut my bookshelves with language, history, mythology, art, and politics of the ancient world and to get up close and personal with Cicero, Demosthenes, and Jesus, to name just a few heavy hitters. And after my first 2 years of college, I began saying frequent prayers of thanks to Cicero, Demosthenes, and Jesus for the great opportunities of this tiny and intimate department.

As my major might indicate, I have a tendency to focus on the past rather than the future, so it was by no great forethought of my own that my academic life has worked out so beautifully in my time here, but let me share with you a few of the great things that have come as a result of this major.

First of all, the average number of Classics majors in a graduating class here is around 10. This means that classes are tiny. The largest course for my major that I have ever been in was 18 students. The smallest was 4. I have never had a problem getting into any of the classes required for my major, so while all my friends in the Journalism school and the biology department are sweating it, registration is rarely a struggle for me. I have been able to get to know all of my professors on a very personal level, and I am able drop by and talk with them about class assignments and life in general just about as often as I could want to. At a school the size of Carolina , this is certainly something to crow about.

Furthermore, by the abundant graces and resources of the Classics department (to which I will be forever indebted), I was able to travel to Greece this past summer on a full scholarship. I received a Nims fellowship through the department, packed my big old suitcase (which fell apart 3 weeks into the trip, but managed to make it back to the United States mummified in Aegean Airlines packing tape and shrouded in a garbage bag), and headed off to the birthplace of democracy where I rubbed elbows with statues of Athena, ate lamb liver and lung on the island of Crete, and skinny-dipped with middle- aged German women in the chilly Mediterranean Sea.

So choose Classics, and you too may find yourself in a foreign country being presented with the windpipe of a freshly slaughtered farm animal for supper. Or choose whatever it is that fascinates you. You may know right now, or you may not know until you get here and you've taken a bunch of different classes in Uzbekistani Studies, Fingerpainting, Primitive Cultures, or Nucleotide Sequencing. But find something you love (and you will if you try), and you won't regret a single minute of your academic pursuits.