SchoolisHard

Choosing your classes for your freshman year isn’t really that difficult, but your choices now affect your class selection in the future.

If you have not already, take a look at all of the courses the degree you want requires. Draw up a four year plan that allocates a slot for each course. (Many schools already have this taken care of on their websites with a few ambiguous sections you fill in.) Pay close attention to the minimum requirements in each area. A physics or chemistry major is not going to be able to get away with just Math 1010.

Some students may feel like they are wasting their time, but core requirements are the backbone of a college education. You improve your writing skills, learn to communicate better orally, and read more than you ever did in high school. You seriously get a little bit of everything in these courses. You have the usual English, math, and science requirements, but college introduces a few more. Don’t be surprised if you have to make a tough decision between Art Appreciation or Chinese Culture.

Core course requirements for each university are different, but most follow a format similar to this:

• 2 classes of Freshman English
• 1 class of British or American Literature (Your university may offer some more literature courses.)
• 2 classes of a natural science (Chemistry, Physics, etc.)
• 2 semesters of American history (Some of the more technical majors may be exempt from this.)
• 1 math class (The minimum difficulty varies according to major.)
• 2 or 3 fine arts or humanities courses (Art Appreciation, Philosophy, etc.)
• 1 public speaking class
• 2 or 3 social sciences (Psychology, Sociology, etc.)
• 1 Physical Education class (Go ahead, laugh.)

Choose courses which you think might interest you but still take care of a general ed. requirement. If you hate art, opt for music appreciation instead. If you hate both of those give philosophy a chance. College has many, many more class options than high school. Take advantage of it. Make sure you won’t be wasting your time. Some majors require that you take two literature classes. Some majors may REQUIRE art appreciation. (Hey, don’t ask me, I don’t write the rules! ) Be absolutely certain that if you MUST take a class you hate you go ahead and finish it. You don’t want to be one semester away from graduation and have your adviser inform you that you have to take a lower-division freshman course.

Majors in fields such as political science, history, or psychology give you much more leeway than some majors in class selection. (Some other majors fall into this category, as well.) These majors usually have a larger elective component in the overall curriculum. This enables you to take “experimental classes” in random fields to see if there is something else in which you may be interested. You may even find one of these experimental classes so interesting you decide to change your major!

Not all schools require you do physical education, but if you want to, feel free. Phys-Ed classes usually net you 1 hour of college credit. Colleges have all the usual sports, but there are also some fairly wacky sport offerings. (Would you ever have imagined taking Samurai Sword class for credit?)

Equally as important as choosing which classes you take is choosing WHEN you take them. Some classes simply won’t have this option and it honestly will not be fun. If you are not an early riser and your hardest class only starts at 7:50 AM then you are going to have to change your lifestyle.

Colleges accommodate all sleeping habits, but there are always more classes in the morning than any other time. If you are an early riser do not be surprised if all of your classes are done by noon or earlier every day.

If you are more of a “breakfast at noon” kind of person then you have a few afternoon options, but you still may be stuck with a few 10AM or 11AM classes.

If you are completely nocturnal then you will find college very tiresome. Even if you get night classes they are often very long and tend to meet only one night a week. Try to find a balance with your sleeping habits that might allow you to grab an 8 AM class right before you go to bed. Once you wake up you’ll still have time to eat breakfast before your 6PM anthropology class which you find so fascinating.

Here are a few more tips:

• Visit Rate My Professors before you register for any class. This website has ratings in several different categories for college professors. Students know what they are talking about and do not hold anything back. If a professor has a 2.1/5 then there is a reason for it and you should do your best to take the class with somebody else. A teacher can make or break your class experience, so choose wisely.
• Don’t take more than 2 really challenging classes at once. Even though you are a smart student, difficult classes require a lot of preparation to excel. It is often not a matter of your intellect but a matter of your TIME. Who wants to be writing 4 15-20 page papers during vacation? Unless you have to, sticking with 2 hard classes at a time is a good rule of thumb.
• You are going to be covering a lot of material in your classes, so try to avoid taking two classes which are somewhat similar but inherently different. Taking German 1010 and Spanish 1010 at the same time may boost your ego, but it probably won’t boost your GPA. The same can be said for two programming languages or two history classes which cover a similar period but focus on a different area of the world.