Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the best way to achieve your Gossip Girl dreams. Sitting on the steps with a crowd and dressing like an Upper East Sider, it’s fun! But, it’s even more fun when you get to do it as a part of a class, with fellow students like Blair and Serena.

I’ve taken two classes with Dr. Jackie Kopel: Ancient Medieval History Through the 14th Century, a freshman class part of two different Learning Communities, and Ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom Through the Ptolemaic Period. I took the first class in my fall semester and was so excited by Jackie’s knowledge of Ancient Egyptian history that I decided to take the Egyptology class this semester. In the Ancient Medieval History class, we focused a whole unit on Ancient Egypt, which is where the Met trip came in.

The Ancient Egyptians had very important funerary rituals and specific funerary objects. In both classes, there is a paper where we focus on two funerary objects and we explain them in detail. For this paper, we met up one day at the Met Museum steps as a class and explored the Ancient Egypt exhibit of the museum together. Jackie took us through the exhibit and imparted all of her niche Egyptian knowledge to us. It took maybe an hour, and afterward, we were free to explore the museum as we pleased. We had to take pictures of funerary objects that interested us and then we had a month to research and write our papers on the objects of our choosing.

Both of these classes really interested me, even as a student who never enjoys history. I had so much fun in the Ancient Medieval History class that I chose to take another history class the following semester! As an Egyptian, I found it very enjoyable to learn about the Ancient society of my culture, and it’s definitely worth taking the class if you’ve ever had any interest in mummies. And having an excuse to go to the Met Museum and learn a bit is always worth it!

Feature image via Wikipedia and Creative Commons