<p>Toughest class in the first 2 years- at 2 diff colleges/she transferred from one small LAC to another to get her major- was ECON. Reasons: she is really a verbal whiz with superior abstraction abilities, and found the imprecision of language references to be mind-boggling. Also, testimony to her good decision to go to a small LAC with small classes taught by actual profs- this was a lecture class with a TA for questions. TA spoke poor English and misunderstood most of my D’s questions. Yup, college offers all KINDS of learning experiences!
Her decision to take this course was her own attempt to get more grounded in the real world as she pursues a more art/humanities type of degree. Too bad.
Her soccer team-mates all complain about ORGANIC CHEMISTRY.</p>
<p>^ORGO is a killer for all pre-meds. However, usually it is NOT a freshmen course. It could be taken first semester, though it is not such a good idea to take hardest classes while adjusting to college requirements and new way of living.</p>
<p>Am I the only parent of a student in the arts?</p>
<p>Intro. to Theater: nightmare of the semester. And as the parent of a commuting student, I got to hear about it live, in person, with color commentary almost every single day. The whole family did the happy-dance after the exam this week!</p>
<p>^Not only. D. has Music Composition minor. All music classes were for relaxation away from science (which she also enjoys, but they require ton of work). Challenge - singing with all those musical people with amazing voices. Well, result - pretty awesome voice of her own, who would ever thought? If she has chosen Music Performance, that would have been much more time consuming which she could not afford doing. Composition was more fun than hard work. Just one more Composition class next semester before she graduates in May.
Theater sounds intimidating.</p>
<p>Architecture major - Studio Design Course = 30+ hours in studio every weekend. D2 also said that anytime she got more than 5 hours sleep, she was lucky.</p>
<p>BCEeagle - I agree with learning Chinese over time. Our situation was complicated by only one parent speaking the language (Cantonese, not Mandarin as first language). We tried the Chinese schools and private instruction at an early age - it worked to an extent, but the English speaking parent was the one at home with the kids reinforcing the lessons. It seemed to fit better to let the kids spend extra time on music and sports, so now the kid that really wanted the language and didn’t feel her life would be complete without it is tackling it in college. The other child has carved out a path of acquiring multiple European languages - she says she is not willing to devote that much time to the study of one subject alone even though it interests her.</p>
<p>The interest in teaching Chinese to non heritage students seems to be growing and I think this is a good thing, but my experience has been that for those who haven’t tried to learn the language themselves, the difficulty of learning Chinese is often underestimated.</p>