My Favorite Classes at Barnard

Hornick, Andrea. Fashionable Goose Accompanies 
Flighty Mistress For Late Afternoon Stroll. 2009.

I have shared with you experiences of gaining professional skills during college and enjoying life in Morningside Heights outside class, but those are really just the tip of the iceberg. Today I am going to crack into the ice and show you the essence of studying at Barnard: strong academics.

As you may have heard, Barnard's curriculum, the Nine Ways of Knowing, gives you a great opportunity to explore various subjects, helping you find the field(s) of study that you are truly passionate about and further supplementing your major studies. I came into Barnard not knowing what to major in. So I started with classes that would fulfill the Nine Ways of Knowing. (There are really so many options and you can even petition for a class that's not on the pre-approved list.) I ended up taking classes that are fun beyond imagination.

One of the first classes that I took at Barnard was a drawing class called Drawing in Museums. I did a lot of visual arts in high school so I wasn't expecting anything brand-spanking-new. However, the moment Professor Andrea Hornick walked into the art studio, I knew that I was committing to an unprecedented adventure. Andrea (she liked to go by her first name) is an established artist in New York City known for her adaptations of Renaissance masterpieces. She began the class by showing us her recent works in which she copied Renaissance female portraits and elegantly superimposed animals over the space around the females portrayed. "This is exactly what we are going to do in this class," said Andrea, "to copy what people have long considered masterpieces and then give them a subtle twist and make them into something completely beyond people's expectations." She continued, "It doesn't matter if you have previous experience with drawing. I am not here to teach you skills but to inspire you to think in an artistic way. I want to be a visiting professor at Barnard because I know it's the perfect place to carry out experimental projects." 

Just like Andrea said, the class turned out to be an amazing experimental journey. We visited different museums during class time every week and copied artwork. The homework to take home was the "giving it a twist" part. And then we would come to next class to present our "twisted" works and we discussed the philosophy and process behind our artistic decisions with each other. At the end of the semester, Andrea helped each of us put together a portfolio and conferenced with us individually to discuss our experiences. I still remember the last comment that she gave to me: "You may or may not pursue drawing as your life career, but I do hope that it will always be part of you and remind you from time to time to give life an elegant twist!"

Another of my favorite classes is Intermediate French with Professor Brian O'Keeffe. You would imagine a language class being full of dull grammatical exercises, but surprise, surprise! At Barnard, you get sophisticated in language classes too. The best moments in class were when Professor O'Keeffe explained the philosophy behind particular French words or grammatical structure. For example, one day we were reviewing French words related to time and "maintenant" (now) was one of them. Suddenly he stopped and asked, "Has any of you thought about how this word was formed?" Nobody responded. He continued, "Well if you look at it closely, you will see that it is made up of 'main' (meaning hand in French) and 'tenant' (a form of the verb 'to hold" in French) so 'maintenant' literally means holding hands." He went on to challenge us to think about the relationship between the temporality of the word "now" and "holding hands." I won't go into detail because the discussion lasted half an hour, but one thing is for sure--it was a mind-blowing class for me. If I hadn't taken this French class, I would probably use the word "maintenant" for the rest of my life without knowing how philosophical it could be!

These are just samples of the amazing classes offered at Barnard. II could go on and on about all the "wow" moments in almost every class that I have taken. Barnard makes you want to learn and that's the best kind of education you can ask for.

Fangdai