<p>My college only allows freshmen to take four courses in the fall semester. If all goes according to plan, I will enroll in an intensive Western civilization class that takes up two course slots, as well as a French literature class (I haven’t taken French for several months and feel that it’s necessary to jump back in, especially since I love the language). I originally was going to make the fourth course Calculus I or II, but my college offers small classes for freshmen only on interesting subjects, and the one I’m most interested in–about ancient Egypt and with an outstanding professor–is in the fall, so I would actually prefer taking that.</p>
<p>Other info that might help: I am interested in majoring in English, history, politics, philosophy, classics, etc. I have always liked math but know that I will not major or minor in it. I spent senior year doing fairly well in AP Calculus AB, and I’m not sure how far I plan to go in taking math courses in college…it’s possible I would only take two or three more during my undergraduate career because I have so many other academic interests.</p>
<p>Would it be bad for me to have an all-humanities courseload for first semester? Would taking a break from math until the spring dull my mind or something along those lines?</p>
<p>Chances are that if you are going to major in the humanities, your math requirements will be minimal and your AP class may meet the requirement. Take what you enjoy.</p>
<p>It can be fine -my daughter went in undeclared and so did not take math her first semester and then took calc 2 her second semester and it was fine (she even declared as math/econ and having not taken a math class one semester is no problem).</p>
<p>However, having 4 humanities classes may be a problem for a different reason - lots and lots of reading and writing! If each of these classes requires a paper each week and 100 pages of reading each week (or possibly an entire book)- will you be able to do it all. I think a balanced schedule (especially first semester) where some classes are reading intensive and some are not - is probably better. Although my daughter had no math class - she had a balanced schedule - one class was pretty reading intensive, one was writing intensive, one had problem sets (econ), and one was watching films - so she was able to keep up with the volume of work.</p>
<p>I ended up not taking calculus my first quarter, and I decided to go into CS. I’m not behind in my math requirements at all. Waiting a semester to do math shouldn’t be a problem, especially for a humanities major.</p>
<p>I agree with kiddie. If at all possible, try to vary the type of work you do for each class so it’s more manageable.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that calculus will be a necessary prerequisite for any course you need for the majors you list, so it is not a big deal if you do not take it immediately. Even if you choose to take a calculus-based statistics course (for political science or similar subjects, though usually they accept a non-calculus-based statistics course), it will not be a long prerequisite sequence, and high school calculus AB may be sufficient for that anyway.</p>