Worthless college courses: Art and Environment (my retrospect)

I've written before that most of a college curriculum is there to waste your time. I took 120 credit hours to get through the undergrad program while accounting hours only made up 27 total credit hours. Any kid going through the college path will have the same experience regardless of what major he declares. There will be classes there just to waste your time and have nothing to do with your major. By the way, check out Alex at Academic Composition if you ever need his services. The following is the testimony of a worthless class I took.

The class was called perspectives. It was a two credit hour course that met once per week. Each session, I'd show up and listen to the lectures. Each week, we had an assignment to read a piece and write a two page paper on it. While the class was worth nothing to me, it was vaguely interesting.

The instructor's main work was an art exhibit that focused on bits of plastic that found their way into the oceans. Each year, tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean and different currents swallow it up and turn it into a giant swirling vortex of garbage. One such notable vortex of plastic is somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and is supposedly the size of Texas. This has had a detrimental effect on some wildlife like albatrosses. The albatrosses will mistake small bits of plastic for food and eat them. Unfortunately, these birds can't digest plastic so the plastic just sits the the stomach and the birds die from eating too much plastic.

Much of this plastic also washes up on the shores of Hawaii. My instructor went to Hawaii to try to clean up the plastic on the beaches but there is just tons of it. After hours of cleaning, the polluted beaches look exactly the same because there is just that much plastic.

To raise awareness about the situation, our instructor took the plastic that she cleaned from the beaches and turn it into art work for her exhibit. I went there to check it out just to get extra credit for the class that she was teaching.

After finishing the class, I didn't give much thought about swirling plastic vortexes the size of Texas until about 2009 or 2010. Gorillaz release their third album called Plastic Beach. I'd always been a fan of Gorillaz and it was a no brainer that the concept of the album and the artwork was inspired by plastic laden beaches and plastic vortexes in the ocean. However, none of the songs from that album really made a reference to the plastic. But the creators did make sure that the album was sold in paper sleeves instead of plastic cases.

Looking back at that class, I'm really glad I had scholarships to make it through college. That class was kind of interesting but definitely not worth the few hundred dollars per credit.

I sat through that class just thinking about how much I'd rather be skateboarding or what it would be like to finally take some accounting classes.