Anthropology sophomore Van Truong recently combined art and biology in an effort to ace her final exam in December. While most of her college mates used lists and flashcards to memorize stuff, Van used a whiteboard to write out all her notes in the form of ‘Starry Night’, Van Gogh’s famous masterpiece.

最近，為在12月的考試中取得拿高分，人類學專業大二學生梵·張把生物學和藝術結合在一起。她多數大學同學都用列表或卡片去記憶事物，而梵用白板記錄她所有的筆記，構成梵高大作“星空”的形狀。

“I knew I had to study for this exam, and I knew I’d be writing on this whiteboard for hours,” she said. “So I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I did it in a form where people didn’t know how to feel about it?’”

她說：“我知道我必須準備這門考試，也清楚要在白板上寫上幾個小時，所以就想，如果我把筆記構成一個什么形狀，大家會不會覺得很有趣呢？”

So when she got to Smathers Library on the University of Florida’s Gainesville campus, she started to write down all her notes with the words forming a replica of Van Gogh’s iconic painting. Three hours later, the masterpiece was complete.

于是，她去了佛羅里達大學蓋恩斯維爾校區的司馬瑟斯圖書館寫下她的筆記，構成梵高標志性作品的形狀。三個小時后，大作完成。

Truong said that the special technique helped her keep awake during the grueling study session, and actually learn more than she normally would have. “I knew if I had to read through a packet of notes, I’d fall asleep,” she admitted. “I don’t know if I would’ve lasted three hours just going through notes. I can explain chronologically the order of where I placed each word on that Starry Night replica better than a sequence of events in evolutionary history.”

張說，這種方法使她在繁重枯燥的復習中保持清醒，也幫助她比使用普通的學習方法學到更多的東西。她承認：“我知道要是我讀成本的筆記一定會昏昏欲睡，肯定堅持不了三個小時。我能說出我在‘星空’中放置的每個詞語的順序，比講歷史事件的發生順序說的還好。”

And the reason she chose ‘Starry Night’ was because of its composition. She realized that a painting of a person might look disjointed if made out of words. But she could easily make the sentences look like Van Gogh’s beautiful, wavy brush strokes.

她選擇星空的原因是星空獨特的結構。張覺得用詞語畫肖像畫可能會看上去很亂，但是星空就不一樣了。她可以輕松地用句子模擬梵高美妙起伏的筆觸。

The young anthropology student is no stranger to original art. Last year, she and a friend recreated Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa using seaweed that had washed up on shore near her home.

張對原創藝術很熟悉。去年，她和朋友用她家附近海岸沖上來的海帶重畫達芬奇的名作蒙娜麗莎的微笑。

Vocabulary

anthropology: 人類學

sophomore: 大學二年級學生

ace: 得分

grueling: 累人的

packet: 數據包，信息包

disjointed: 雜亂的

(譯者：小霹靂 編輯：祝興媛)