6) You must write a 10,000 word thesis on your chosen nonsubject and may have to defend it orally. If you can't write 10,000 words of bull on a bull subject, you've made a mistake - you may have to work for a living.
The rules above allow plenty of elbowroom; at least three out of four courses can be elective and the remainder elective in part, from a long menu. We are still talking solely about nonmathematical subjects. If you are after a Ph.D. in astronomy, UCSC is a wonderful place to get one . . but you will start by getting a degree in physics including the toughest of mathematics, and will study also chemistry, geology, technical photography, computer science - and will resent any time not leading toward the ultra - interdisciplinary subject lumped under the deceptively simple word "astronomy."
Breadth - the humanities, natural science, and social science - 1/3 in each, total 3/3 or one academic year, but spread as suits you over the years. Classically "the humanities" are defined as literature, philosophy, and art - but history has been added since it stopped being required in college and became "social studies" in secondary schools. "Natural science" does not necessarily mean what it says - it can be a "nonalcoholic gin"; see below. "Social science" means that grab bag of studies in which answers are matters of opinion.
Courses satisfying "breadth" requirements
Humanities
Literature and Politics - political & moral choices in literature
Philosophy of the Self
Philosophy of History in the Prose and Poetry of W. B. Yeats
Art and the Perceptual Process
The Fortunes of Faust
Science and the American Culture (satisfies both the Humanities requirement and the American History and Institutions requirement without teaching any science or any basic American History. A companion course, Science and Pressure Politics, satisfies both the Social Sciences requirement and the American History and Institutions requirement while teaching still less; it concentrates on post - World - War - TI period and concerns scientists as lobbyists and their own interactions rows with Congress and the President. Highly recommended as a way to avoid learning American history or very much social "science.")
American Country Music - Whee! You don't play it, you listen.
Man and the Cosmos - philosophy, sorta. Not science.
Science Fiction (I refrain from comment.) The Visual Arts - "What, if any, are the critical and artistic foundations for judgment in the visual arts?" - exact quotation from catalog.
Mysticism - that's what it says.
(The above list is incomplete.)
Natural Science requirement
General Astronomy - no mathematics required Marine Biology - no mathematics required Sound, Music, and Tonal Properties of Musical Instruments - neither math nor music required for this one!
Seminar: Darwin's Explanation
Mathematical Ideas - f or nonmathematicians; requires only that high school math you must have to enter.
The Phenomenon of Man - " - examine the question of whether there remains any meaning to human values." (Oh, the pity of it all!)
Physical Geography: Climate
The Social "Sciences" requirement
Any course in Anthropology - many have no prereq. Introduction to Art Education - You don't have to make art; you study how to teach it. Music and the Enlightenment - no technical knowledge of music required. This is a discussion of the effect of music on philosophical, religious, and social ideas, late 18th - early 19th centuries. That is what it says - and it counts as "social science."
The Novel of Adultery - and this, too, counts as "social science." I don't mind anyone studying this subject or teaching it - but I object to its being done on my (your, our) tax money. (P.S. The same bloke teaches science fiction. He doesn't write science fiction; I don't know what his qualifications are in this other field.)
Human Sexuality
Cultural Roots for Verbal and Visual Expression - a fancy name of still another "creative writing" class with frills - the students are taught how to draw out "other culture" pupils. So it says.
All the 30 - odd "Community Studies" courses qualify as "social science," but I found myself awed by these two: Politics and Violence, which studies, among other things, "political assassination as sacrifice" and Leisure and Recreation in the Urban Community ("Bread and Circuses").
Again, listing must remain incomplete; I picked those below as intriguing:
Seminar: Evil and the Devil in the Hindu Tradition. Science and Pressure Politics - already mentioned on page 529 as the course that qualifies both as social "science" and as American History and Institutions while teaching an utter minimum about each. The blind man now has hold of the elephant's tail.
The Political Socialization of La Raza - another double header, social "science" and American History and Institutions. It covers greater time span (from 1900 rather than from 1945) but it's like comparing cheese and chalk to guess which one is narrower in scope in either category.
The name of this game is to plan a course involving minimum effort and minimum learning while "earning" a degree under the rules of the nation's largest and most prestigious state university.
To take care of "breadth" and also the American history your high school did not require I recommend Science and Pressure Politics, The Phenomenon of Man, and American Country Music. These three get you home free without learning any math, history, or language that you did not already know .. . and without sullying your mind with science.
You must pick a major.. . but it must not involve mathematics, history, or actually being able to read a second language. This rules out all natural sciences (this campus's greatest strength).
Anthropology? You would learn something in spite of yourself; you'd get interested. Art? Better not major in it without major talent. Economics can be difficult, but also and worse, you may incline toward the Chicago or the Austrian school and not realize it until your (Keynesian or Marxist) instructor has failed you with a big black mark against your name. Philosophy? Easy and lots of fun and absolutely guaranteed not to teach you anything while loosening up your mind. In more than twenty - five centuries of effort not one basic problem of philosophy has ever been solved .. . but the efforts to solve them are most amusing. The same goes for comparative religion as a major: You won't actually learn anything you can sink your teeth into
but you'll be vastly entertained - if the Human Comedy entertains you. It does me.
Psychology, Sociology, Politics, and Community Studies involve not only risk of learning something - not much, but something - and each is likely to involve real work, tedious and lengthy.
To play this game and win, with the highest score, it's Hobson's choice: American literature. I assume that you did not have to take Bonehead English and that you can type. In a school that has no school of education (UCSC has none) majoring in English Literature is the obvious way to loaf through four years. It will be necessary to cater to the whims of professors who know no more than you do about anything that matters ... but catering to your mentors is necessary in any subject not ruled by mathematics.
Have you noticed that professors of English and/or
American Literature are not expected to be proficient in the art they profess to teach? Medicine is taught by M.D.'s on living patients, civil engineering is taught by men who in fact have built bridges that did not fall; law is taught by lawyers; music is taught by musicians; mathematics is taught by mathematicians - and so on.
But is - for example - the American Novel taught by American novelists?
Yes. Occasionally. But so seldom that the exceptions stand out. John Barth. John Erskine fifty years ago. Several science - fiction writers almost all of whom were selling writers long before they took the King's Shilling. A corporal's guard in our whole country out of battalions of English profs.