Comments on: Have I Chosen the Right Courses

By: Christmas Girl

Christmas Girl — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:34:12 +0000

I think any unknown may seem too difficult at thу first sight. but within time it gets easire and interesting

By: Kit

Kit — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:36:55 +0000

Having taken my time to really settle into college, I have had a good amount of experience dropping, adding, swapping, withdrawing, etc my classes. The biggest thing is that you have to make yourself aware of the possibility of you leaving the class. Most people are fixed in the mindset that their course schedule is set in stone and can’t be changed. Better late than never to adapt your learning environment to fit you better, but it’s best to do it as soon as you can act on it. If you let yourself be aware of it from the start, you can more readily judge the class and sense if it isn’t going to work for you. It may be just the teacher you need to change, so switch into a course with a different teacher. It may be the time of day, or frequency of the class, and you can look for a better fit for your schedule. You may have to meet with an academic adviser to help you weed through courses to find one that fits your needs. An adviser can help you plot long term when you could plan to take certain courses to make everything fit your needs. For example, if there is a class that you need to take that is only offered in the evening, and you are a morning person, if you look into future semesters you may find that class offered with earlier times, and you could plan accordingly. An adviser can help you with that kind of stuff.

An example of my own now in judging classes to be a bad fit:
On the first day of a math class, the teacher said he made his class different from the other math teachers. He didn’t use the text book and he didn’t allow calculators. Now, for me, I know that math is difficult enough WITH a calculator, so I knew that this class would be unnecessary stress. I literally left that first class within the first 15 minutes. Be strong, don’t worry what other people will think, just follow your gut.

By: Carl Hickson

Carl Hickson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:00:07 +0000

Good point Aria, however I feel it depends on the teacher.

Whereas some teachers will just shock you with the quantity of work, giving you copies of the syllabus etc. Some teachers do the opposite, easing you into things nicely, giving you bits of the syllabus at a time.

I think “Does the course seem too difficult?” does still stand, however; only in some contexts. If the teacher is easing you into it, like I have experienced in the past, and things will in fact get harder, then maybe it is right to drop the class.

I suppose this would only apply at pre-university levels however; because once you’re into university, I would presume that it’s all pressure from day one. This is something you could perhaps enlighten me on a little more, as I have no experience with universities (yet…)

Thanks for the comment.

By: Aria

Aria — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:36:47 +0000

I disagree with “does the course seem too difficult?” For some of us - the first two weeks of any course are the worst because we see that scary ol’ syllabus and start worrying - and we haven’t had a chance to learn the professor’s style regarding tests and papers yet…

Now yes - if its extremely difficult - but if I’d used that rule I would have dropped out of almost every class, and I wouldn’t have a Bachelor’s degree, a Masters degree and be starting work on a second Master’s degree now!