As a high school junior from 2004-2005, I took AP Art History at Delmar High School with Mrs. Judy Hearn. If you really want to expand your knowledge of art and see the world and its historical events in a brighter light, take an art history course. However, I will mention the importance of having an instructor that makes the subject come alive and cares about your outcome in the class. They should care to the point where you wonder if they secretly think you’re retarded based on the notes you receive on the tests you get back. In college I took Italian Renaissance Art History, but my instructor failed to capture the magic and her class became my twice-a-week afternoon siesta (I still earned a B).

After a lot of scrimping and saving (at least on my family’s part), our class took off on the inaugural Hearn Art History Extravaganza to visit various locales in France and Italy.

I will never forget the feeling of leaving the east coast of the United States and traveling by air for the first time, and seeing everything we had spent the entire school year learning about in textbooks come to life before us. I am hoping that one day again I will get to see the Eiffel Tower and police officers on rollerblades in France, and enjoy a view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy after tracking down that restaurant where I bought the most incredible sandwich of my life in 2005.