THE OBVIOUS PLACE to turn is to Literature and Arts B. There are no drawbacks whatsoever to this Concentration! You are expected to do nothing but look at beautiful pictures and listen to beautiful music. Lots of the books you buy are in color and look good on coffee tables. You will learn to bat around words like "plasticity," "chiaroscuro" and "tonality" without knowing precisely what they mean.

But no one will care. Art makes people feel good. This department will provide you with the proper intellectual apparatus to talk for hours about the majestic potency of Bizet's Carmen, which is, I believe, an opera (or perhaps a Renaissance portrait). In any case, it is a shining example of the heights to which the human spirit can soar.

Fine Arts majors are clitist and cliquey, and Visual and Environmental Studies majors are unhappy because they feel they must suffer for their art, but people who take only Literature and Arts B courses are friendly and chipper. Undergrads, grad students and professors smile at one another. The teaching fellows dress stylishly. Besides, the courses all have such cool nicknames. In what other department can you take "Spots and Dots," "Strings for Dings" and "Clapping for Credit"?

Of course, it's not all fun and games. Occasionally you can furrow your brow and talk about what a shame it is that Rothko's paintings have deteriorated, or about how terrible it is that Michelangelo's bronze statue of Pope Julius II was melted down to make a cannon.

Don't be too traumatized, though. The Lit & Arts workload will make you feel better. You study by putting on a Walkperson and sitting under an oak tree, the sounds of Coltrane's soprano saxophone surrounding you. You meditate on how "A Love Supreme" influenced countless other jazz musicians.

You meditate on the A you will receive at the end of the semester. You look up, see skies of blue and clouds of white, and you think to yourself: "What a wonderful world."

Are you ready? If so, take the Core.