Posts tagged with courses.
Electives: Drop it? Swap it? Keep it?
New profs, new classes, new semester. The time for course dropping or swapping is almost up. Now it's decision time. Am I going to change any courses?
We've had a week of classes to get to know our new schedule. After listening to a couple of lectures, and observing the prof's teaching style first-hand, a course's true nature is revealed: is it the ultimate bird course? Or the ultimate GPA killer?
Dropping a mandatory course might not be in the cards, but it's still possible to drop and swap any icky electives. Whatever the case, students are making final decisions now on what courses to keep for the winter semester. With that in mind, here are my three C's to keeping a course, or kicking it to the curb.
First C: Commitment. What's the time commitment for the course? This is an important consideration when looking at your new schedule. Now that you've got the course outline and met the prof, you can make an informed decision. Does the course require endless pages of readings that make even Accounting 101 sound fascinating?
A good way to see if an elective is over-staying it's time-commitment boundaries is by comparing it to your mandatory courses. If your "Introduction to Tourism" course has more assignments than your mandatory calculus class, maybe it's time to reconsider your options.
On the other hand, you might have discovered that you've scored the perfect elective. Like "History and Film," where you go to class for three hours a week to watch movies, and then write three essays. No exam. Yes, this is a real course.
The second C is Content. Is the elective interesting? Yes, of course a great mark is ideal. Marks can even supersede content. But not at the expense of brain cells. If you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the finer workings of Classical Mythology, why subject yourself to four months of it? Even if it is a guaranteed 90 plus just for showing up.
Well, maybe it's not that boring.
Final C: Compromise. This is the most important because it has veto power over the first two C's. Is content worth a huge commitment? For instance, I thought I'd found the perfect elective. The prof was universally popular on ratemyprofessor.com, if you do the work (and not too much, either), it's a guaranteed easy mark (thanks again, ratemyprofessor), and the subject matter is fascinating (geological impacts on human health - Sounds neat, right?).
So I went to my first class, thrilled that I had found the perfect elective. Until I got the course outline: 20% for group presentation. Group presentation? As in, stand in front of 100+ people? And talk? Ugh.
So I've spent the last week trying to figure out whether my perfect elective is worth the compromise. Easiness vs. presentation. Interesting vs. presentation. Group presentation (big deal that I'm not alone up there) versus the fact that I'm still standing up in front of 100+ people. And talking.
Knowing your priorities is how you make the decision between a great elective and dreading the next eight weeks of your life.
Tagged with
courses,
semester,
drop,
electives,
winter
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