Sure, the Classics Department sort of made fun of me for the "classical civ" part: could I not just go all out and be a Latin major? There was more of interest to me in the architecture of Roman villas than there was in the structure and metaphor of the first book of the Aeneid. And I emphatically did not enjoy learning a new alphabet – the Greek one. The Classics Department pitied me, and coopted me for Latin plays even knowing that I would never be really serious about their subject. I played a braggart Roman soldier, and a Roman whore as well; I directed! Latin plays were my main extra-curricular activity. Some of my best friends were Classics majors, and I later learned that Greek scholars make amazing computer programmers so at last I had something to say to a computer programmer (luckily my sister was a Greek Major and now professor, so I talked about her).

A combined major made it perfectly sensible, although extravagant, for me to go to Italy with Richard Wallace's tour group on a three-week tour of Rome, Florence and Venice before starting my spring semester abroad at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. Pure heaven followed by even purer heaven! And here I am again, living in Italy, twenty-five years later in 24/7 eye-candyland. When I stupidly refused to follow my advisor's counsel that maybe graduate school was not really for me, nor generally a happy time in one's life (she was right – oh so right), I went to London and finished a MPhil. in Renaissance Painting. In the tea-room there I tried to recall why it was that I became an Art History major. It finally came to me: it was Ward Kimball's cheeky book Art Afterpieces and Dan Greenburg's Porno-Graphics (described this way by the stuffy publisher "Color plates with acetate overlays for a humorous attempt to clothe classical nude paintings") both of which I still own, that pushed me toward the early morning eye-candy of Art 100 at Wellesley.

Art History could be fun and pleasing to the eye in ways Economics and Political Science could never hope to be. In Art History you can have valid, informed, and sometimes negative opinions and express them, not at all as I imagine it is in Physics class, for example. Higher-level courses were even better, and they started later in the day too. Between the Art Library with its limitless wonders, normally in color, and the Science Building, it was an easy choice. Of course, there were the other art majors (several of whom are still my friends) and the fascinating professors, who seemed not to be real people at all in our first couple of years. Being an art history major made me slow down in museums and really look at things. Museums smell good too. Sometimes, if you stare at something long enough it becomes part of you. That's what I wanted. Nothing helps you compare and contrast as well as two history-laden images.

Of course, I thought there was no way I'd ever get a job after an art history major, other than teaching. Teaching was not for me, nor a museum where the inventory never changes and the works must be shared with a less-appreciative public. Eventually, by sheer luck, or maybe karma, I landed a job as an assistant cataloguer with Sotheby's in the north of England. None of the all male interviewers had been to college, or had ever heard of Wellesley, or of Phi Beta Kappa, but they hired me, maybe because they sensed a willingness to learn and to work hard, and the potential ability to work with the opinionated woman who became my boss. Those are hopefully qualities that Wellesley amplifies in us regardless of major.

Studying art history was good preparation for learning to be the "expert" in my field in six months flat by memorizing past auction catalogues the night before every "Advisory Day" I attended. There were hundreds of them, all over the North of England and thousands of miles of driving to get to them and home again. Picture the Antiques Roadshow without TV cameras but with bone-chilling cold, weak tepid tea and hundreds of folks with desperate hope in their eyes. They presented gew-gaws wrapped in newspaper to me and I silently prayed I'd recognize and be able to put a price on what was about to be unwrapped.

After romancing property from little old ladies, and selling it to younger sharks to resell to other little old ladies, I had customer service skills I'd never fully appreciated. My writing and research skills from Wellesley came in handy when I went to work for a fledgling internet company. A recruiter, who specialized in finding non-technical people for technical companies, told me I was perfect, but still removed all of the dates from my resume. Not a computer science course on my transcript and a C in Calculus, and still they wanted me! At my start-up company interview, all majors were welcomed, since it was self-sufficiency and ability to thrive without too much direction that they were really after. Choosing a less common major has the built-in advantage of giving you lots to talk about and justify in any interview situation.

At this distance, I can say that I was glad not to have picked a major or majors until I got to college and started exploring what was available. If you love a subject, you do well at it, and in doing well at it you develop the skills you need to do anything and everything. A subject can lead you anywhere, and the subject you did not even know existed can lead you to adventures you could never have imagined. When I had not been in London long, I met up with one of my former Wellesley professors. Studying in England was much more self-directed than Wellesley had been, even for undergraduates, and I was off balance. I confided to him that I feared that I had already forgotten most of what I'd learned in college. He replied that there was nothing to worry about: if nothing else, I had learned at Wellesley how and where to find what I needed to know - regardless of major.