Around the time the second wave of midterms comes around, University students often start to focus less on their current classes and more on prospective classes for the upcoming semester. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, as it is good to be prepared and informed when selecting classes. There are, however, several pitfalls to avoid on the road to selecting classes. Avoiding these obstacles can make for a much more rewarding academic experience.
The first hazard to avoid is an over-reliance on the Course Forum and ratemyprofessors.com. These websites are valuable resources for students, and contain useful information and reviews of professors, but they tend to rely in large part on the difficulty of the course. Some students use these websites for other reasons, including finding the most engaging lecturers, but rare is the review that admits that a course is challenging yet still encourages prospective students to enroll. Courses chosen for their easiness alone are lost opportunities for greater intellectual development, which the Course Forum and Rate My Professors tend to exacerbate. These resources are better used in the later stages of course selecting, after students have narrowed down a formal schedule, rather than the earlier stages when they are just beginning to formulate a list of potential classes. Choosing a tentative list of courses with Lou’s List based on intellectual interests, before whittling it down with the Course Forum and Rate My Professors, is a better option than relying only on the possibly unreliable and outdated grade distributions put forward by the Course Forum.
The Course Forum and Rate My Professors also have an inclination to emphasize the amount of work or reading in a class. This is certainly a valuable tool for students, as excessive reading can place a heavy burden on a student’s extracurricular and social life. But students, especially first-year students, should remember that classes at the University, especially compared to high school classes, emphasize personal and independent learning, and students should not shy away from classes because of purported heavy reading assignments. Most classes, aside from foreign languages, have just two to three hours of actual class time per week. Often, the majority of learning takes place outside of the classroom via assigned readings. And so it is conducive to intellectual development for students to choose classes that challenge themselves outside, as well as inside, the classroom.
This advice is not to encourage students to enroll in the hardest possible classes with the most outrageous workloads. Rather, it is to point out that there are other purposes to the University beyond having a good time socially and landing a job after graduation. The most fundamental purpose, the original purpose dating back to Mr. Jefferson, is to seek knowledge. It is important for students to remember this as they choose their classes for the upcoming semester. While there are far too many pursuits outside of the classroom for students to devote themselves exclusively to studying at the University, students should ensure that these other outlets do not interfere with acquiring a sound education. Upon leaving for college, a huge number of older people, mostly friends of my father, encouraged me to have fun, but cautioned me to remember my studies. They would give anything, they said, to have the opportunity to go back to college and simply read about history, music, psychology or anything at all. Students have an incredible opportunity on their hands. Let us make sure that we do not throw away that opportunity through vain selection of classes.
_John Connolly is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. His columns run Thursdays. _
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