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Choosing Classes
BY ABBY MCCARTNEY The first day of sophomore year, I showed up to Statistics 100 with my two best friends. We sat together and took notes as our professor droned on incoherently about problem sets and terminology. As we walked out, Rebecca asked me, “Do you think you’re going to stick with this class?” “Well… I need to take Stats,” I replied. “And I need a math credit,” Sarah said. “But the professor’s terrible,” Rebecca pointed out. “He doesn’t speak a language!” She was right. His instructions on the homework had sounded something like, “Page 17, graphs, categorical variables, JMP software, dotplot, dotplot, dotplot.” “But you can’t drop the class!” Sarah and I protested. “Stats is the kind of class you want to take with friends!” A SEMESTER OF FRUSTRATION To her credit, Rebecca stuck it out for about a week before jumping ship for an economics class with a warm and vastly more coherent professor. Sarah and I took a deep breath and signed ourselves up for a semester of frustration. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the class nearly ruined our friendship: the weekly problem sets we didn’t understand, the nagging question of whether it was worthwhile to even go to class, the review sessions that left us tearing at our hair. In the end, Sarah dropped out just before the final. So much for a class you want to take with friends. For me, Stats 100 is a cautionary tale. In choosing to take it, I made two classic mistakes: I ignored the quality of the professor, and I lost sight of what I wanted to get out of the class. In my eagerness to stick with my friends, I put the convenience of taking a class with them over my desire to actually learn something about statistics. I did fine in the class, but two years later, I don’t remember a thing. After seven semesters, choosing a handful of courses from a catalog of over 2,000 options hasn’t gotten any easier. Still, I do have a few tried-and-true strategies that have found me more wonderful classes than duds, at least so far. First, I rely heavily on advice. By now, many of my friends have taken classes I’m interested in, but even as a freshman, there were plenty of upperclassmen around to offer guidance. Peer advisers, “big sibs,” and older members of campus organizations love to help freshmen narrow down their choices. This is the best way to find out which economics professor makes supply and demand hilarious and which one leaves you baffled Online evaluation systems like RateMyProfessor.com are also helpful, as long as you keep in mind that the people posting comments may have a skewed perspective or an ax to grind. When you see an evaluation of a class that begins, “Beware: you DO have to study for this midterm! Or you will fail it and be really angry that this supposedly ‘easy’ class just tanked your GPA!”—well, you can imagine what happened there. If a course’s online reviews seem to have an overall consensus, such as, “A lot of work, but fascinating,” or “boring but easy,” ignore it at your peril. I’ve taken a few classes described as “boring” because I was so excited about the material that I thought it wouldn’t matter. Don’t kid yourself: If the reviews are bad, the class is bad, and no amount of enthusiasm can make up for it. YOU’LL KNOW Of course, the primary reason for a bad class, or a good one, is the teacher. This is no less true in college than in preschool or high school, and even professors with distinguished reputations don’t always excel in the classroom. The good news is that studies have found that most people can very accurately predict professors’ evaluations after only a few seconds of observation. In other words, we often know right away whether we like a professor, find her engaging, or want to listen to him every week. While I’ve had some wonderful lecturers who were as much entertainers as educators, my favorite professor is not a performer. In fact, he barely talks in class. But his assignments are so thoughtful and his feedback is so provocative that I learned something from every minute I spent on his class, from the first reading to the final paper. A good professor does not necessarily mean a flashy one. Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when choosing classes is the purpose each class serves. I’ve taken courses for all kinds of reasons: to introduce myself to an area that I know nothing about, to spend time with The key to being satisfied with your choices is remembering that purpose during the semester, when other parts of the class may begin to seem tedious. “Yes, the papers are a pain,” I’ll tell myself, “but at least I’m finally getting to read these books I’ve heard so much about.” If you know why you’re there, you’ll get a lot more out of the class—even if you don’t take it with friends.
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