When I first saw the two terms: art and science, I was a
little bit confused. How are these two titles related? They are supposed to
represent two different aspects and developing areas of the society.
But as Snow asserts in his book, though there are many wrong impressions
between the two sides, we still need to incorporate scientific and intellectual ideas
into our everyday thinking, and we have to change this through the education
system.
In UCLA, I found it
really easy to ignore the existence of the other culture. As an electrical
engineering student myself, I spend most of my time running in south campus.
All my classes this quarter are located around the Court of Science, I hardly have
chances to step into, or even pass the Broad Art Center and the sculpture
garden. Most of my friends also come from majors like computer science, physics
and math. I understand that university education makes us specialize in our
future career, but our life is not all about working.
(The Broad Art Center I hardly go to)
(Court of Science that I stay every day)
I am an
international student from China, so I have experienced a very different
education since I was young. During middle school, we have to learn all subjects including literary and scientific courses. At first I thought I was a
pure “scientific nerd”, but my history teacher changed my opinion. She
tirelessly corrected my mistakes on the paper and told me how the history
progressed and how the past events were connected. I found history pretty
interesting and it could also enhance my logical thinking for the scientific
subjects.
There is no doubt that two cultures exist, but
we have no idea to separate them completely. So the only thing for us to do is
to embracing the different culture. I am an engineer, but I would like to
explore more in the literary world. Also, I will not stay in my safety zone, instead, I will learn everything this university can offer me and make myself a more
holistic and helpful person.
Sources:
UCLA Department of Art. Web. 2 April, 2016. http://www.art.ucla.edu/contact/directions.html
As a bioengineering student, I am in a similar situation as you are in regards to always staying near the Court of Sciences and Boelter Hall. Since DESMA 9 is an online class this quarter I have not even walked past Royce Hall yet. This is the first quarter where I don't even have a discussion in North Campus and it shows how college students become more concentrated within their major as their education progresses. I admit that despite having more convenience in not running back and forth all day, I do miss the brighter feeling and environment of North Campus. I believe that UCLA as a whole should do less to promote the campus divide and try to bring students of all majors together. An example would be to introduce a more creative aspect to hard science classes such as making them project based instead of test based so that students can do more than simply regurgitate information and techniques. This would create a more holistic college experience for all students and allow them to gain many new perspectives about the "other side".
ReplyDeleteI concur entirely with your sentiment about embracing the other culture, and that it is unproductive to separate art from science. As an English major, I'm mostly on North Campus but I, too, grew curious about the other culture (science) so I took a Life Science 1 course and spent more time in South Campus, which was novel, fascinating, and totally different from what I'm used to. By taking this course, I saw how my literary skills were useful in lab work while simultaneously stepping out of my "safety zone," at UCLA, as you mentioned in your post.
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