When it comes to the arts verses the sciences, I've always held to the standard techie view: that the sciences are hard and the arts is just a bunch of art history students talking bollocks for four hours a week and partying for the rest. Art is easy. Science is hard. Right?

Erm. Wrong. Actually.

Why do I say this? Well back in 1991, I took a one year course with the Open University (a degree level course which I was doing as a one-off). It was called M205 Fundamentals of computing and it was easy. Each week the course books would teach me a new technique, every few weeks I'd have to do a marked assessment, and I ended up with a distinction, which is 85%+. (I can't remember the exact score but I think it was something in the low nineties). Why do I say it was easy?

Well imagine you spend your week learning how to do a particular mathematical equation. Imagine you then have a marked assignment where you have to do ten of these equations. What does it mean if you get all ten answers right and score 100%? Does it mean you're a genius? Are you Einstein? No. It just means you understood how to do that type of equation, checked your answers, and didn't make a mistake. I wrote little programs to sort and so on, and they did indeed sort (and so on), and so I scored lots of high marks.

But what about the arts, you ask? Where do they come in? Well last year I fancied doing some kind of writing degree, and the result of that is that I've just started AZX103 An introduction to the humanities, and you know what? It's really hard.

In our first week we learned how to evaluate paintings from a whole load of different technical, semantic and emotional perspectives, and now - in my first marked assignment - I'm staring very hard at a painting by Picasso trying to think what I can say about it. What would it mean if I scored 100% in this exercise?

It would mean that not only was my understanding of this painting perfect, but that my ability to explain that understanding was perfect also. It would mean that I had said all that ever could be said and ever would be said. It would mean that I was omnipotant. It would mean that I was God.

Do I think that I'm going to score 100% in this exercise? No. I'm not God. Do I think I'm going to score a distinction (over 85%). No. No way. This stuff is hard. As I read through the books they keep on having little exercises where they ask you to write down what you can see in a particular painting, and sure enough, when I make my list, and then read on to see what they've got, they've seen loads of stuff I've completely missed. I failed to spot Jesus Christ, Son of God and ultimate saviour of mankind in one painting.

That wasn't a good day.

For this course they have an initial "trial" assignment that is marked, but with the score being a non-counting dummy. We had to write an evaluation of the language used in three extracts from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I got back 60% (a level three pass), and a comments from my tutor that basically amounted to: "Nicely written, but here's all the stuff you missed."

I'd like to push my final score up to above 70% (a level 2 pass) but that's as far as my ambitions reach. In fact, just keeping at 60% (a level 3 pass) would do me. There's certainly no way in hell I'm going to get another distinction. Why?

Because the arts are hard.

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