Reading, writing, art, and history are etched in looping script spanning generations and culture upon my very soul. Flowering patterns of interlace revolving around thought, culture, and critical thinking color my world and my educational experiences. To know me is to know my intense love of the classics, 19th-century poetry, writing profound essays about deep recesses of academia, and standing before expansive gallery exhibits combining historical context with technical analysis. In other words, I am a humanities student through and through.
As a student double-majoring in the History of Arts and Architecture and Anthropology (which I’ve still yet to decide on my emphasis for), I’ve often found myself at odds with my STEM-oriented peers. Please, stop laughing at my major and telling me “you’ll never make any money” — has it ever occurred to you I’m just in it for the genuine love of the game? I may not be destined for a life of Bezos-level wealth (which I’d never want anyway), but I can say, in comparison to many of my peers, that I genuinely enjoy my classes and am passionate about my field for reasons beyond material gain.
Just today, one of my roommates asked about class recommendations. She brought up CLASS40: Greek Mythology, which I took last year and still gush about to everyone who will listen to me. While I raved about how interesting and invigorating the class was, for its critical examination of not only “stories” per se but the original texts and historical institutions that contextualized these myths, my other Biology-major roommate looked at me oddly and reported she found it rather boring and rarely attended class.
I don’t bring this anecdote up in efforts of shaming my roommate, nor placing myself on a pedestal for enjoying the class. She, like nearly all of my STEM friends — be it Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Environmental Science, Biopsychology and Brain Sciences, or Applied Mathematics — is incredibly driven, fastidious academically, and for lack of a better word, smart. Instead, I use this as an example of how I think many STEM students perceive humanities classes: as less engaging, timely, and therefore less deserving of their own emphasis.
Now, before you get defensive, this isn’t a haughty attack on STEM majors. I, like most people in the 21st-century, appreciate STEM fields for their expansive innovations, interventions, and problem-solving capabilities, and way of advancing increasingly growing geopolitical spheres. I myself enjoy these classes; my dad is a high school science teacher, my brother, a doctor of physical therapy with a degree in Neuroscience and Physiology, and it was my first Biological Anthropology class that stirred my interest in the subject.
My point of contention is more with the seeming lack of equal treatment and respect bestowed upon humanities classes. In most of my lower-division art-history classes, I find myself as one of the only (if not the only) actual art-history majors. This directly translates to the culture within the classroom. I’ve found that my STEM peers using the course as an easy Area F fulfillment frequently take these art-history classes unseriously. Many only pass-fail the class, regularly admit to Chat-GPTing entire swaths of course requirements in these largely writing-based forums, and don’t show up to lecture at all, much less having done the assigned readings.
Of course, there’s many reasons for this. A large one follows that in a highly competitive and fast-paced learning environment, such as the quarter system at our esteemed UCSB campus, each student must prioritize their own majors before other General Education requirements. I don’t find people at fault for this. I do think, however, this prioritization of STEM subjects in general raises the broader question of cultural shifts of perceiving STEM as more valuable, and humanities classes as easier to write-off.
This sentiment is truly the crux of what wounds me. In our rapidly changing world, it seems natural to follow this trend and pursue more quantitatively lucrative fields, such as those of many STEM majors. Moreover, the murky past of many humanities disciplines, between dark colonial histories, corrupt religious backings, and overall issues with human culture in terms of racial, gender, and socioeconomic disparity, has left a bad taste in many people’s mouths.
Still, it’s undeniable the power and importance of these fields. How are we to move towards the future if we cannot even offer a comprehensive understanding of our past? As a lover of semantics, you can truly ask, “what’s in a name?” The humanities, at their core, is a study of human expression.
To quote N.H. Kleinbaum from the Dead Poets Society:
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
Dead Poets Society, 1989
While STEM is undoubtedly a vital study, so are the humanities. The humanities and their application serve to contextualize facts, data, and studies. While much of STEM is binary, with an exact right or wrong, this information does not exist in a vacuum — it requires individuals, communities, communication, and culture to contextualize and give meaning to these studies. With that, I implore you to not only take an arts or creative humanities class, but to take it seriously.
Beyond my own personal interest in these classes, there are boundless merits to their understanding. Arts classes foster critical thinking, which contributes to a larger worldview and integrates perspectives from different groups and ways of life. They stimulate empathy and diverse, thoughtful reflection on not only your culture’s artistic traditions, but act as comparative resources for that of others.
These classes cultivate creativity and force students to think outside of the box to create new solutions and nuanced understanding of disciplines where there’s no clear right answer. Moreover, they better crucial academic skills, such as writing, which can be applied to almost any field. By stressing the different facets of human thought and potential, humanities classes provide meaning and purpose for all STEM endeavors.
I’m not expecting you to abruptly change your major to Philosophy and pose symposium-style discussions to your classmates. Instead, I encourage you to apply yourself to these courses with the same grit and tenacity you would STEM classes. I guarantee you’ll find the change of subject matter and method of learning refreshing, and will expand upon skills of critical-thinking, creativity, and empathy that can in turn be applied to your own major classes. After all, while STEM is designed to better humanity, this can only be done through an understanding of what it means to be human.