<p>wow, I really don’t like how you generalize your own experience with certain classes in UChicago to imply something applicable to the core itself and to everyone else.</p>
<p>First off, you’re not taking any hard physical science courses. If reading and writing come easy to you, then of course the classes you’re taking would seem overrated and underwhelming. Having personally taken Honors Calc and Physics Var B, I’d say that yes, the core is quite hard. for ME, and for you, something completely different as well.
“This is true”, but the point is that people can make the core as hard or as easy as they want, but that there are a lot of arbitrary factors that could influence one’s experience with the core (e.g. professor, class makeup, etc. Like right now, my physics class is hard as hell as compared to last quarter, because our new prof is much, much harder to please).
Also, how “hard” the core is is something completely relative to every individual. I know a 1st year taking 203 MATH (Analysis), Sosc, Hum and Civ and breezing through it, while others I know have course loads much less rigorous but find it very difficult (also, time management skills have a lot to do with this). To present a very extreme case, I know a girl who bled from her ears during finals week because of a combination of sleep deprivation and stress. She was a second year, taking core, math and econ classes. </p>
<p>Perhaps you came from a great, academically rigorous school (which I bet you did), but a lot of people here also come from public schools (e.g. me), so I think that some perspective is needed here. How “hard” the core is is going to be relative to every individual. Like every other top school there’s a huge standard deviation when it comes to “rigor” and the quality of the core. I too thought HUM (Greek Thought and Lit) was extremely lame, but since I’ve gotten a new professor this quarter who is absolutely amazing, knowledgeable and great at teaching the course, I now have a much more positive outlook on Humanities core classes here in UChicago. </p>
<p>So when you say “In short, I don’t think that the core courses are very stimulating or even interesting,” what you really mean is that the core courses and sections you’re currently taking are not very stimulating/interesting.</p>