It’s midway through the year and aside from the dreaded midterms, students are beginning to solidify their second semester schedules and preparing to make next year’s schedule if they are an underclassmen. When you start to look at courses, you should highly consider taking Mythology. “One of the reasons students should take a mythology course is because it gives them a sense of cultural literacy… I think when reading that it gives us a better sense of why we’re reading and what we’re reading,” says Mrs. Oldham, the mythology teacher.

The course is half-year for one period a day. When people think about mythology, they generally think about the standard Greek and Roman gods, but this class examined much more than that. The course covered everything from symbolism in myths, to sacred places, and back to gods and goddesses as archetypes. “My favorite unit was the flood unit because we learned about almost every culture and what happened in it. We got to focus on them,” senior Nick Fiorentino says. The course covered apocalypse myths, creation myths, and much more. Towards the end of the course, we studied longer myths such as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Senior Lauren Ships says, “I didn’t have a favorite unit because all of it’s amazing and all of it’s so much fun. Mrs. Oldham is a great teacher and everyone should take this course because it’s amazing and you learn so much!” The course does give some homework in the form of mini research papers and a final paper; however, Mrs. Oldham gives the class each assignment at least two weeks in advance and time in the library for research. So, unless you procrastinate, it does not take up too much time.  

“I was really excited when they brought back the elective. We didn’t have the course for about four years. I missed it a lot. It’s one of the more fun classes and kids have a lot of fun in the class. Because it’s an elective, there is a little bit less fear about the course. People are taking it because they want to take it… You can get more in-depth with it than a general English course,” Mrs. Oldham says. The in-depth discussions happen to be one of the reasons why senior Eric Rennard loved the class. “I think the discussions are the most memorable. All the discussions we had about the stories, the in-depth discussions, were great,” he says.

So, if you want to read some cool myths from many cultures, listen to your upperclassmen and take Mythology! You won’t regret it!