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Emily MacArthur MC'99 writes: It’s been ten years since I
graduated from Monmouth. I was an economics major, but
I minored in Classics and I went on the Classics trip
to Turkey and Greece in May of 1999. While much of what I learned in my classes
on ancient Greece has remained vivid in my mind, my lessons in economics have
long since faded from memory. From time to time, I still sing Sappho’s poem
about watching the path of the Pleiades while waiting for her lover. And last
week, I sat in my car long after my lunch break was over to finish listening to
a conversation on NPR with the author of Black Athena. I
could not care less about Reaganomics! Back in my Monmouth days, I was
hell-bent on majoring in something my parents deemed practical, and that led me
to 10 years of soul-crushing office jobs. In my Classics
classes, I learned to make connections between different cultures and ideas.
Psychology is a Greek word after all, is it not? The themes we discussed in the
Iliad and the Odyssey are as meaningful today as they were in
Homer’s time.
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