Studying history in Spain

 You may well wonder what it means to study history as your main subject at university. Another thing that might puzzle those of you out there educated in the US is that I had to decide from the get go what to study. First of all, studying history is far more than just recitation of facts and years, it is a way of thinking and analysing the world. Second, in studying history, you learn not just about it but how to produce it.  As for choosing subjects before I had even started at University, well that is just the old  European system, which may or may not have changed with the implementation of Bologna after 2010. Before Bologna, you didn't study a mixture of subjects just one. Liberal arts and the common core don't really exist in Europe. My university did have something close to the common core that some catholic institutions have in the US in that we had to study two years of something called Anthropology and one semester of ethics.  Anthropology was not ethnography or analysis of cultures but rather something more akin to intro. to philosophy of the human person based on the continental understanding. 

So my first year of studying history was an interesting one that required a huge leap. Part of the trouble was the strong northern Spanish accent, the other was the intensive note-taking. It may surprise many to find out but I took a lot of math and sciences at school and was just getting used to humanities lectures. The Spanish accent would become familiar but in those first days in history I found that all those archaeological names in Africa were difficult to understand. So Olduvay sounded like Uruguay but somehow I doubted that the first human remains in history were found in Uruguay but that is what the professor seemed to be saying. Medieval history was another adventure in particular keeping a straight face once the professor took out the kitchen clock shaped like a penguin. We had long blocks  of classes, about 4 to 5 hours daily and by some evil conspiring we had two hours of medieval history followed by ancient art history. The medieval history prof was habitually late in ending her lectures and we were then usually late for art history. Someone must have complained because after a few weeks of being late out came the penguin. She meant it as a reminder to stop lectures in time for us to cross campus and by on time for art history. The first couple of times it would ring and she would stop but as the winter weeks continued she gradually began to ignore the penguin. It would ring, she would stop as it rang and then continued the lecture for at least another 5 minutes accompanied by her stating that she had no idea how she was meant to get through the entire material. With 8 hours of medieval history a week we ended up, at the end of the semester, with some 200 pages of notes plus the 500 pages of reading. It was truly gargantuan and somehow all I seem to remember are the maps we drew with the migrations from Jutland to England during the 7th and 8th centuries. 

Due to government regulations our curriculum consisted of those classes that the university felt were compulsory for our degree and those the government had identified as compulsory.  This meant a class per semester for four semesters of Geography broadly understood. Rocks and formations, the weather, glaciers crossing the earth, and such things were at the core of these classes. I faired badly in this class, which was usually right after lunch given by a prof with a nervous tick and a monotonous voice. I couldn't look at her while she lectured because she regularly moved her head. Deep down it was an interesting class and, if I hadn't fallen asleep during every single lecture, I may have done better. As it was I had to borrow a friend's notes and try my best. When I went to office hours she was surprised I was so lost since she always saw me at her lectures. I never knew if this was meant sarcastically or if the nervous tick prevented her from noticing the detail that I usually fell asleep five minutes into the class. Another class that has remained with me is ancient history. First, the prof in question had us watch a very funny movie based on a Roman play called "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Farm" during which he laughed not infrequently, a feat given that he showed the movie every year during Roman History. Second, in the overly anxious christian phase that I was crossing at the time, I became concerned that these non-christians had all gone to hell. Of course, I asked the prof who very kindly told me that he was sure that God in his wisdom and mercy had given all of them a way to salvation, whether or not they knew/believed in his existence. I am sure he put it more clearly than this but as I remember it it allowed me to relax regarding how people accessed salvation.

The end of the first year coincided quite fittingly with "A Funny thing happened on the Way to the Farm" and a very hot university sports day before we all fled the annual invasion brought on by San Fermines (the running of the bulls).