Define THIS!

Shewara and I have been on a "definitions" kick recently. Not definitions of words - though there are problems with those too - but rather definitions of people.

STORY TIME!!

So I was talking with some friends, and one of them was dicussing how he had gone to the office hours of a history professor to ask a question about an assignment or some such. The faculty member in question was a professor of Medieval history (as I recall) and yet he had a JAPANESE painting on his door. Gasp! My friend was confused by this, the man being a Medieval historian and all.

But oddly enough, I was not confused. Why? Because people can have MULTIPLE interests. It's fascinating really. It seems like when we get to college, we are expected to have a billion different questions about the world and our place in it. By the time we leave our university, though, we are expected to have one strong interest that we will make our career, and if we go to grad school it has to be even smaller. For example, I know graduate students who study something to the effect of "Portrayals of Female Gender Identity on East Central Parisian Paper Plates between 1715 and 1804". Or something to that effect.

And so we define people that way. Like me, I'm in art history. But I also like sports. And astrophysics. And bad comedy movies. I don't want to have to pick one type of anything I like more than everything else, because I don't like one type of anything above others. Yet society forces me to choose.

Well dammit I don't want to, and I don't think anyone should. I hate majors in college, I hate schools like "Engineering" and "Liberal Arts" because I think they force people to define their interests into convenient little packages. Well ya know what, screw that. I am going to keep reading about art alongside basketball, religion alongside bad adventure novels, and anything else I damn well feel like. I refuse to be confined by my college major, my job, or anyone else besides me.

And as always, Jackson Pollock can shove it.