The school schedule, the blueprint for every student’s semester. Your schedule of classes will determine how your semester is going to go. In the world of higher education it can be nearly impossible to navigate the vast amount of classes offered at your university. My hope is that this article can give a broad range of advice so whether you’re an incoming freshman, or a sixth year senior you’ll be able to get something useful out of it.
This first tip is for my incoming freshman, go to orientation early. Usually, before the school year starts there is some sort of Freshman orientation. In the case of my school there were many freshman orientations spaced out across the summer. If you can go to an earlier one it will only benefit you. Why? Because they usually let you make your schedule at some point during orientation. As a freshman you’re already last on the pecking order to pick classes. Every other upperclassmen has already made their schedule months before you. Being ahead of all other freshman will allow you to make the least shitty schedule you can possibly make.
Next tip for making your schedule, nothing before 10am. “But Jackson what if I’m an early riser?”. If you are, good for you but this list isn’t how to be the most productive with your day it’s how to make an easy schedule. You don’t want anything before 10am and you don’t want anything after 4pm. Night class is good in theory, but it’s hard to drag yourself to a class that’s usually once a week and three hours long. You don’t want to dread going to class.
No Friday classes. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. Friday classes suck so much ass. News flash Thursday is one of the best days to drink. Thirsty Thursday is a sabbath day for college students and the deals at bars are always hot on Thursday. You’ll quickly realize waking up hungover for class Friday isn’t the move and you’ll either stop going out on Thursday , or you’ll stop going to class. Both are bad.
So far I’ve covered a lot of things a vetted college student would know. Now I’m going to tell you something you might not. You can Abuse your school adviser’s power. Not in a bad way or anything, but they are there to help you and can be a very valuable resource. After my freshman year of college I went into my adviser’s office and asked for the easiest Gen Eds I could take. He told me that he couldn’t give me the easiest classes per say, but what he could do was cross reference the amount of times a class has been taken with the highest pass rates of a class. Through this method I’ve taken 8 classes and gotten B’s or higher in all of them. To put this in perspective, in one of those classes, I forgot to take an online midterm and I still got an A in the class. If you want to take this a step further you can cross reference this method with the rate my professor app so you’re getting the easiest class with the easiest professor. Mic drop and you’re welcome.
Expanding on the ideas of the last paragraph, most schools have a required Gen Ed art credit mandatory for every student. This is what I like to call “A Trap Credit”. Similar to the idea of a trap game in sports, an art credit should be an easy pass yet I see people biting off way more than they can chew simply because they didn’t take the time to look at all classes that qualify as an art credit. I don’t know how many of my friends chose to take an art survey class, or an art history class that ended up being way harder than they anticipated. Look at the full list of classes, easy ones will jump off the page at you. For example, there’s a yoga class at my university that qualifies as an art credit. I’m not knocking on yoga, but for many people this would be an easier, less stressful option than being bombarded by the amount of work and art history class might have you doing. I took acting 101 for my art credit and had a blast. The lesson is don’t just randomly pick a class because you have to take something. Put in 5 minutes to look at class lists and make the best choice for you.
I personally think this takes away from the college experience, but taking online classes in general makes your schedule easier. Now, I don’t recommend it because being in the classroom and having interactions with other students and professors is part of being in college. Taking an online class isn’t the end of the world, but just know what you’re getting into when you sign up. Also, at my university, online classes are more expensive. So that’s something to keep in mind. More money on classes is less money on fun.
Wrapping up this article let’s review some of the main takeaways. Firstly, no morning classes, no night classes, no Friday classes. Second, sign up for classes early so you can make sure you’re not taking any classes in the time frame of the first takeaway. Third, Abuse the power of your advisor and optimize taking easy classes. Four, Don’t sleep on your art credit. Five, online classes will take away from your college experience but are generally easier than and in person class.
This is the way my young degenerates. In my opinion college should be a time that you enjoy. You’re only here for a short amount of time and in that time you want to have as much fun as possible while achieving your academic goals. All majors no matter what you’re going to do have parts that are hard. That being said, don’t make the other classes required by your school harder than they have to be. Did I miss anything? Comment below with tips that make your schedule easier.
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