great books
So, at Columbia there's this cute little thing called the core. And it is classes you have to take- including literature humanities, contemporary civilization, music humanities, art humanities, major cultures classes, frontiers of science, etc. As an engineer, you have to take about half as many of these classes and you get to choose (i.e. music or art hum) Next year I am taking lit hum which is a great books course (which all non-engineers take as a freshman) that consists of ~20 classic works (iliad, odyssey, medea, symposium, bible, aeneid, king lear, don quixote, pride & prejudice, etc.)
So I came home from school (in May) and began reading my heart out (3 books in as many days) and thought hmm, maybe I should read some of my lit hum books... Unfortunately I had purchased the entire box set of books from one chris fleming, but stored them all in NY for the summer. But I went to the library, checked some of them out (some are harder to find) and here I am. I started on the Iliad but gave up cause I just don't like it (or the Odyssey, which I've already read).
So far, however, I have read: Oedipus the King (Sophocles), Medea (Euripides), Lysistrata (Aristophanes), The Inferno (Dante), and Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). All in all- not bad. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty stoked about it- think, I'll probably be the only one in the class who will have read all the books (minus Homer's). Plus it'll be essentially taking all the work out of one of my classes. Minus papers and stuff, but it'll still be really nice. And I enjoy reading, a lot, but I generally don't read things for school cause it's just... not in my nature. But I think this is actually the most proactive thing I've ever done. Ever.
So I came home from school (in May) and began reading my heart out (3 books in as many days) and thought hmm, maybe I should read some of my lit hum books... Unfortunately I had purchased the entire box set of books from one chris fleming, but stored them all in NY for the summer. But I went to the library, checked some of them out (some are harder to find) and here I am. I started on the Iliad but gave up cause I just don't like it (or the Odyssey, which I've already read).
So far, however, I have read: Oedipus the King (Sophocles), Medea (Euripides), Lysistrata (Aristophanes), The Inferno (Dante), and Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). All in all- not bad. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty stoked about it- think, I'll probably be the only one in the class who will have read all the books (minus Homer's). Plus it'll be essentially taking all the work out of one of my classes. Minus papers and stuff, but it'll still be really nice. And I enjoy reading, a lot, but I generally don't read things for school cause it's just... not in my nature. But I think this is actually the most proactive thing I've ever done. Ever.