My name is Kay Hwa. I go by Caroline in the States and to
some folks back home too. I’m currently a junior at NYU studying Economics and
Comparative Literature and would like to share some tips on finding classes to
take.
There are many things to consider when taking up new classes
for the semester. Here are a few I constantly have to ask myself:
1) What is the class about? Is the subject matter
interesting to me/is it intellectually stimulating?
2) Is the professor good at teaching?
3) How hard is the class? Is the workload heavy? Might this
negatively affect my GPA?
4) Will I learn anything practical/technical?
5) Does this fit into my schedule?
Since you get so much freedom to pick and choose your
classes AND professors, one needs to be extra careful because a good or bad
professor might make a huge difference in your perception of the subject
matter. At the same time you might learn a lot from the class but maybe his
past students have mentioned that it is a hard class to get an A in. On the
contrary, you might be looking for something to boost your GPA this semester so
you might look into something fun and has a relatively lighter workload. Also,
some classes like “Intro to Programming” will be more practical to put on your
resume than a class like “Renaissance Art” for example. However, you might be
very interested in Art History in general, so you may opt to take a class some
time down the road if not right now (I did). Lastly, since you are making your
own schedule, YOU need to decide what kind of a schedule fits your lifestyle
the best. For example, maybe you are not a morning person and hate 9am classes,
so opt for afternoon classes instead then! Or perhaps you want to pursue
on-campus jobs/internships while studying, so you want to keep 1 or 2 of your
days free for that.
Making all these decisions can be very time-consuming and
frustrating at times, however I personally enjoy doing the research because
frankly it's fun to have total control over how you want the next few months of
your life to be like!
