<p>^^ I don’t know, you tell me. This place is looking more and more like a clique of people who may only know how to have text relationships with each other, many who seem quite shallow thus far. Must be a California thing.</p>
<p>College confidential is a shallow forum in general with most people placing emphasis on “name brand” schools than anything. It is most definitely not an issue isolated to this particular sub-forum of college confidential…but isn’t this a little bit of the case of the pot calling the kettle black because isn’t choosing a major based on something like how making conversation with females shallow? Also, what you said implied that women are not genuinely interested in science and engineering therefore it is easier to make conversation about art. Wouldn’t this be a somewhat narrow-minded (therefore shallow) conclusion?</p>
<p>I’ve only taken a few courses in each subject. I thought that art history was easier but since I thoroughly enjoyed my philosophy classes they did not feel like hard work.</p>
<p>In philosophy I often had to analyze philosophical arguments step-by-step and work toward a mental breakthrough to understand a concept, similar to understanding proofs in math. </p>
<p>In art history there was a great deal of memorizing art and their respective artists. Sometimes I found the subjective nature of analyzing art obnoxious but it was still somewhat interesting. </p>
<p>In the end, how well you do depends on which one you’re more interested in. By the way, are you sure you don’t want to do a science major to go along with your pre-med courses? It would be better to have a more useful degree in case your medical school plans do not work out rather than have a AH/Phil degree. Unless of course you feel passionate about one of these subjects.</p>
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You know when you guys drive in a parking lot and it is confusing and thus results in congestion, then you say to yourself, “this was engineered poorly.” Me thinks of angryengineer. <em>thumbsup</em>****<em>snozzle</em></p>
<p>Who said anything about choosing a major? The question being posed from what I gather had to do with a single class and the path of least resistance. The girl I dated was a engineer major and was very intelligent but eventually decided her passion was art so earned a Art History degree instead against her parents wishes. </p>
<p>Philosophically speaking, when I am lacking information I tend to ask questions rather than foolishly jumping the gun with assumptions. I’m not afraid to be wrong and find it makes communication flow a bit more smoothly. I really try to keep my projections in check and not be apprehensive since like learning about people and their interests.</p>
<p>As an engineering student whose wife loves art history (and has a BFA), I just want to say that I think it’s dead sexy when she talks about art history at me, even though I withdrew from the only art history class I’ve ever taken.</p>
<p>So, you know. I guess I should extrapolate some kind of broad claim about half of the world’s population from my single data point.</p>
<p>Ah just what we need…a doctor who is not intellectually curious and confident in his academic abilities to succeed, but whose primarily motivated to instrumentally game the system by minimizing the amount of effort to get the right GPA. I’m sure this is what they are looking for.</p>
<p>From my experience, I’d like to add that value of art history is not about memorization, knowing who did what and what the work is called, and why X work is significant in context to its culture and time. The value of art history is personal in becoming educated in what it means to be human at any given time point in history across all cultures. The value in this is learning to be reflective of one’s own culture and time period, while gaining understanding of the diversity that exists amongst people. One of the more practical aspect to an art history education is that you really learn how to read visual symbols. Our society is a visual culture, and learning to interpret subtleties that often influences our perceptions of reality and choices is beneficial in learning to think for yourself, or what you’re being sold. Even architecture today, has references to the past works of art/architecture, and knowing why a reference is being made with certain styles and details adds to ones understanding of the world.
Art History as a major could be more demanding if courses required its students to read the whole works of philosophies, writings, and ideas that were prevalent in context with any given work of art. Do you know how demanding it would be for one to have to study greek history, including the prevalent religious beliefs and philosophies of the time, just to begin to set Greek art in context?</p>
<p>Uh-oh, we have a humanities apologist.</p>