Is it Art or is it Science?

My Liberal Arts and Sciences graduation day is in a few months time, but my friends and family still haven’t got a clue what I study. I don’t blame them. My identity and selfdefinition suffer greatly from the ambiguity of my program’s name. Although I study Arts and Sciences, it makes me neither an artist nor a scientist. The name derived from an education in the glamorous classical antiquity, but nobody except Liberal Arts students is aware of this. Fortunately, throughout the years I have developed a reservoir of useful explanations.

I tell my father, a lawyer, that I study Roman law alongside a combination of modern European legislation. I have a feeling that this answer does not entirely satisfy him, because he still shrugs his shoulders and says: “It’s just strange, that’s all”.

I had to disillusion my mother by telling her that obtaining  a Bachelor of Arts diploma will not put me in a position to compete with Picasso. Although I do tell her that I learn other artistic skills, such as storytelling and the art of persuasion.

My boyfriend knows what I’m studying, although he claims I am a natural in Drama Studies. I could pass a living example of one.

The version for my grandmother’s friends varies from “Communication studies” to “Architecture”. They can’t remember what I said during the last tea party, anyway.

I tell strangers that my specialization is in the History of European Witchcraft and the Ontology of the Supernatural. I’m probably the most intriguing person they ever met on a bus.

I appeal to all of you, dear Liberal Artists and Scientists! Let’s change the name of our program to something less puzzling and more clarifying. I’d suggest: Liberal Arts That Has Nothing to Do with Arts but More with Broadly Understood Cultural Studies, Although It Is In Fact Quite Liberal.

Sonia Kolasinska is a third-year Liberal Arts student.