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E-Prince“Frantic” is how Gabrielle Haigh ’13 describes her experience in the four-course Humanities Sequence, HUM 216-219, an intensive year-long introduction to the Western canon.
“You frantically do the reading, then you go to lecture and frantically take notes, then you ...
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insightful.
Maybe Dean Malkiel should "fire" the instigator of this course. Oh, wait a minute, wasn't she the one?
This account reminds me of my time as an undergraduate at Columbia taking the Core Curriculum, much like the Princeton HUM sequence. As the one student here describes it, my experience also was absolutely "frantic" and in many ways quite disappointing because we could never get into much depth, but that is the nature of a survey course covering the whole of Western thought in a year. What's more amazing to me is that the Core at Columbia (and Chicago, for that matter) has lasted all these years, while it is hardly tolerated at most other places.
He added that the “narcissistic wounds” of students who encounter equally smart classmates and teachers who aren’t overwhelmed by their achievements also contributes. Some of these wounds, he said, don’t heal.
True in some cases, but ad hominem nonetheless. If kids want to drop the course let them, don't take it personally.
narcissistic wounds lol
burnnnnnnn
I don't think kids drop it b/c of "narcissistic wounds" at all. I think the course is a good course. But the problem is is that it's totally misrepresented and advertised. It's a literature course basically with a subtle hint at being about Western Civilization in its totality. So a lot of kids will sign up for it and then realize it's not what it's advertised as and will then want to leave.
change the title of this article. hum seq is designed as an each semester thing. people decide to do it first semester and then not decide to do it second semester, just like people decide to do it second semester and not first. only the application process (which most upperlevel departmentals in humanities/social science have any way) makes it a lil different. enrollment and decisions to enroll are fundamentally same as any class. the article's points may be valid but putting "drop out" adds an air of sensationalism to this article which doesnt serve truth very well. for record i am senior who did hum both semesters as frosh
stop pouring salt on our narcissistic, visual arts professor p. adams sitney
The HUM sequence needed a serious re-evaluation for a while so I hope this is cause for it. However, I have no doubt that there will be no such evaluation in light of Prof. Sitney's learned and gracious remarks.
I vehemently disagree with the defense that HUM ought to be preserved in its current state, though I do agree that HUM is inherently shallow. Yet, at no point do the professors ever make a substantial effort to overcome that weakness. Adding one paper at the end of the semester as an exercise in comparing two works is entirely insufficient.
Perhaps instead of providing 50 minutes of precis in nearly every lecture, comparisons and developments could be traced out as related to the concurrently read works. To that end, an analysis of structure, history, literary styles, etc. could comprise the substance of the lectures while the precept periods could be used to analyze the particular works in connection with the lectures as is ordinarily done in other courses. During those periods, professors could provide more guidance or even work out their own arguments about the texts rather than relying on what are essentially student led (and therefore poorly informed) discussions.
As is, precepts are by far the worst part of the HUM sequence because they repeat the lectures at best or utterly waste time at the worst. Yes, it's very nice that you think that Dante's Inferno is like Absolute Zero, but it's a worthless argument to drag out for several minutes. Oh, only one person in the precept read the Princesse de Cleves. How are we having this "informed" discussion about it? Are missionaries bad people? I don't know what this has to do with Kant, but the discussion about it extended our precept by 25 minutes. Maybe Haigh, who suggested extending precepts, wants such fantastic discussions in the future.
At any rate, kudos to the Prince for once. Hopefully it is more than a passing discussion.
There are always people who don't enjoy the course, but when I took it, a bunch of us loved it. It is intense; the grading is rigorous. (Though it sounds like it's already eased up on both fronts, and--let's face--it was never orgo.) But it's also a chance to engage with brilliant professors and fellow students on the texts and ideas upon which so much of the rest of the humanistic sciences are founded. Of course you aren't going to learn the key to Plato's Republic--though that isn't quite what happens even in courses focused just on Plato--but the sequence does offer a first taste of a stable of great books to revisit over the course of a lifetime.
But look, even if you don't like the course, it's an elective and you don't have to take it. Shouldn't a glance at the syllabus at the first class be enough to clue everyone to the fact that things will be moving quickly? I fail to see the need to remake a course that a good contingent of students finds to be immensely valuable. Certainly few other courses at Princeton were as meaningful to my education.