http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/09/should_you_take_a_poetry_class_memorizing_poems_will_make_your_life_richer.html

If I were going to encourage you to take any one class simply because it’s good for the freshman soul, I would say this: Take some introductory literature class that forces you to memorize poems, heaps and gobs and mounds of poems, old poems. Preferably, this class will be taught by some elderly gentleman composed almost entirely of dandruff and corduroy, who took precisely such a class from William Butler Yeats himself, back before dandruff and corduroy were first invented.