It”s around this time of the semester when students begin rethinking their class choices. Why? The first tests are coming up.
Silly week is over, and students can”t afford to doze through their professors” lectures anymore. Most students consider this a bad thing. I don”t.
Don”t get me wrong – I don”t like spending my nights working on essays or trying to wrap my brain around a particularly laborious equation, but I”ll freely admit to seeking out challenging courses when it comes time to register for classes.
While it may make the road to finals week a lot harder, I feel much more satisfied at the end of a course knowing that I actually got useful information out of it. That”s the whole point of education.
By now there are probably plenty of naysayers about to argue that there are a lot of courses that are tough to get through and yet don”t offer students any useful knowledge.
Erin Bamer
I”m not going to debate this, but instead I”ll point out that there is a distinct difference between a challenging course and a course with an overly-large course load. The absence or inclusion of practical knowledge is the key factor.
There are plenty of courses that may make students want to beat themselves unconscious with their pile of textbooks, but truly worthwhile courses are the ones that stimulate students” minds and leave them with lessons that will stick with them long after they graduate. But the thing with these courses is that they”re almost never easy either.
Easy classes are ones that students can sleep through and still receive an “A.” That may sound like a good idea to lazy people, but at the end of the semester those students still haven”t gained anything out of the four months they spent inside a stuffy classroom.
Honestly, I”m not sure why more students don”t use the same strategy I do.
It seems like most students go out of their way to fill their schedules with classes that seem the easiest or will cover subject matter they already know. And so help me God, if I have to hear another student tell me they don”t get anything out of the classes they”re taking, I”m going to beat myself unconscious with one of their overly large textbooks.
Not only is this attitude completely insulting to your professors and your fellow students, but it also wastes your time and, more importantly, your money. Students spend so much money going to school – you would think more of us would want to gain as much knowledge as we can while we”re here.
I understand that all students have a number of classes that are required for their major, and those courses” levels of usefulness vary. But when I”m in these situations, I at least attempt to make the most of it.
Required courses are required based on chosen area of study, which means most of each student”s required courses will relate to their major, which hopefully relates to what each student wants to do with their life. If you can”t get anything out of those courses, you probably want to rethink your major.
As a last resort, just try and listen to what your professor has to say, even if a lecture is on something you”ve already learned. You may think you know everything, because let”s face it –you”re a college student. But you really don”t, and you certainly can”t know exactly what the professor will cover later in the course. Some of the most useful nuggets of knowledge I”ve received have come from my professors” random tangents that have little or nothing to do with the course curriculum.
Registration will be here sooner than any of us are ready for. When it comes, take the time to consider signing up for a course that may make you think deeper during your time in higher education, rather than one that will result in an easy “A.”
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ErinBamer