Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are when I start complaining. My stomach gets into knots, I suddenly feel sick and I find all kinds of excuses to try to not go to my most dreaded class: astronomy.
When I was registering for classes this summer, I couldn’t decide between all the cool classes that I wanted to take. I distinctly remember trying to choose between French and German, art history and psychology, and of course, astronomy and chemistry.
I chose astronomy — big mistake.
On the first day of class, I was excited to go to astronomy. I couldn’t wait to learn about the planets and go to the observations to look at the stars. Even my parents kept talking about how much I was going to like that class. Well, as it turns out, they were wrong.
And so was I.
It turns out the material is not as exciting as I originally thought it would be and the class gets so bad that people actually leave in the middle of the lecture — something I later learned was normal in college.
Not even in high school did I ever have a class that would make me feel so sick minutes before it. The class that I disliked the most in high school was trigonometry... and even that wasn’t as bad as astronomy.
My trigonometry teacher at least tried to get us somewhat involved in the lecture. She would come up with geeky anecdotes about her weekend and she'd give us free candy during the holidays.
But I guess not everything is bad about my astronomy class — there's always going to be a class in your schedule that you won't like, and the best thing you can do is get the good out of it.
I learned my lesson with astronomy. And next time I choose classes, I will be more careful about what I take. Obviously, I’m not going to like every class that I’m required to take, but I don’t think anything will ever top my experience with astronomy.
To avoid classes like this in the future, I'm passing along some information that was passed along to me.
1. Before you register for any of your classes, make sure you check out Rate My Professor for a description of what your class will be like and what the teachers are like. I should have definitely done that when I had the time.
2. Ask your friends if they’ve had any bad experiences with the classes that you are about to take. My friends warned me about astronomy, but I didn’t listen.
3. If it’s humanly impossible to pay attention in class, then make sure you’re getting As on your online quizzes; they really help out when it comes to your grade.
4. Bring your I-clickers — a lot of extra credit for just pushing a button!
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3 comments:
I remember that class ha ha i skipped it every chance I got. U just have to cram before the exams and you'll be fine
Yeah, Astronomy sucks.
Like you, I took it my freshmen year thinking that here was this great class I couldn't take in high school and I was going to learn so many interesting things.
Oh man. How niave I was.
But you have to take these chances sometimes. I can tell you that anthropology, for instance, is easily as brain-numbing as astronomy.
And don't take Chemistry for fun. Chemistry is torturous, with class exam averages between 40-60. If you're interested in science, consider a geology class... it's actually really provocative stuff.
Art History is only good if you take it with Dr.Courtney, a legend at FAU.
Hope that helps a little.
Chemistry's worse than Astronomy--I took both. At least Astronomy you can skip regularly and still get an A. Chemistry has a lab and complicated lectures.
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