UNHP

As an honors student at the University of Memphis, I am required to take the courses UNHP 1101 and 1102, among other honors requirements, in order to graduate with honors. UNHP stands for University honors program and is a humanities class about globalization. Personally, I think it is the most useless and boring class I've ever had to take and I think it's ridiculous that we are required to take it. The class meets every Tuesday and Thursday. The Tuesday class is a large lecture class with 6 professors. Each week a different professor makes a lecture about some random thing about the world or its countries. Then on Thursdays we meet in a smaller section with one of the assigned teachers to talk about the lecture, talk about readings that are required for us to read, and do activites. It sounds like a good idea that should make us more weel-rounded right? Well it's not. We sit through the lectures in pain. It is quite possibly the most boring thing I've ever had to sit and listen to. Not to mention it lasts an hour and a half. Then we're required to read an article equally as boring to prepare for Thursday's class. The readings have been anywhere from 3 to 45 pages long. Yes, 45 pages. It just seems so pointless. The professors that teach the class are anthropologists, geologists, etc. I'm sorry to say, and I know this sounds really bad, but what 19-year-old college kid cares anything about some random tribe in the deserts of Africa that wears only a string around their waste. I mean that's great and all to learn about other cultures but I honestly don't care. Tuesday we sat in class and listened to our awkward professor talk about other cultures sex habits....I never want to hear the word "ejaculation" out of my professors mouth again. AWKWARD. I just really don't see the relevance of this class. I understand what they are trying to accomplish, but they need to think of a better way to do it.

I just read one of the readings for tomorrow's class. It's about this society called the Nacirema who obsess about the human body and consider it an ugly thing. The reading went on to describe all their weird rituals like drilling holes in one's teeth and filling them with magic herbs or else they fear their teeth will rot and their gums will bleed. They believe in secrecy of bodily functions so they have shrines in their homes and that is where they perform any kind of body excretion in private. Not even their spouses ever see this. It was so weird.

I'm not trying to say I'm some ignorant person that doesn't care about other cultures. I know that's what it sounds like. But the way they teach it to us in this class just bores us to death and makes us not really care. I think it's good to learn about other cultures and understand why other people do things differently than we do. I just wish they could figure out a way to make this more interesting to us so we don't dread going to class everyday. I sympathize with everyone that has to take UNHP.