<p>I’ve just finished my 1st year of college and I’m now doing summer classes. The situation is that I love my major and spend a lot of time with it, so much so that I’ve sort of lost motivation for my unrelated gen-ed courses. It’s not that I think it’s really hard, but rather that I just can’t get myself to invest time and care for these unrelated classes anymore. I love learning but want to learn what I want to learn. As a result my grades are on two ends now. Is there a way or any advice I can motivate myself to get through them?</p>
<p>To add: The other thing is that I came to college with no AP credits which is why I now have all these requirements to fulfill.</p>
<p>If you fail, you have to spend MORE time retaking those useless GE classes. Use that as motivation… do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it again.</p>
<p>^^
Seconded. Most of my general education classes were boring, but there were some gems among them. Get through it so you don’t have to do it again.</p>
<p>My advice would be that you’re not going to spend every second of your life doing something that you love and want to do. Everyone has to get through the gen-eds that they don’t care about at all, but look at it as an opportunity to challenge yourself to achieve in an area that you didn’t think you could. This comes from someone who just finished her history gen-ed, and is very relieved! But I was also able to learn a lot in those classes, even if the info might never benefit my career. Good luck! :)</p>
<p>Good advice here, but I’ll also add that maybe you can try and relate these boring classes to your major. You’re a bio major taking comp 101? See if you can write a research paper about some kind of biological phenomenon. You’re a French major taking history class? See what kind of things you can learn about France or its territories. You’re a math major taking a Spanish class? Treat the grammar and vocabulary like patterns and formulas that you have to figure out and memorize. I’ve found tons of ways to relate my majors to Gen Eds (my favorite was my linguistics class because my prof came from Montréal and he used a lot of French words for examples of non-English stuff), and it really does help. </p>
<p>Treat it like a challenge! Try and find as many connections as you can. </p>
<p>It’s definitely easier to get your Gen Eds done before you pick a major, that way you can always keep in the back of your mind “Maybe this will be useful.”</p>
<p>One thing I did was try to take Gen Eds that I liked. For instance, I liked Philosophy and Economics, so I fulfilled as much of my Gen Eds with those as possible. </p>
<p>Stuff I didn’t like was anything Science, which I took as little of as possible (it was one Chemistry class and two Physics classes). There’s no way to get motivation to care about anything more than the grade, so don’t. Just be motivated for the grade. That’s all that can be done. I wasn’t a big fan of DiffEq either but I preferred it to anything Science, so it was less of a drag than the Science, but still, you just do it for the grade. The hope is that it’s not that many classes that you really hate. </p>