Too heavy of a class-load?

marbiovet
Wed, 26 Aug 2015 23:32:45 +0000

It really depends on the person. I took Gen Bio, Expos, Calc 1 and a gender studies class my first semester. That was good for me…sometimes it got pretty stressful, but it was okay for the most part. What may be a lot for me, may not exactly be a lot for you though. Gen bio was okay. It wasn’t exactly easy, but it’s not hard either. If you put the time in to study, you should do well. Chem was a little more challenging and time consuming for me. There are weekly quizzes online. You can retake it, but that means you have to go through the entire recitation session again (which is an hour). And you can retake it once per day, so if you keep failing (like I sometimes did, there are only 2 or 3 questions), that’s 5 hours per week dedicated/wasted to recitation. Chem isn’t just memorization and requires more conceptual understanding and application. It actually wasn’t terrible for me, but it wasn’t something I could cram for (and I’m a pro crammer) unlike bio. Expos was really rough for me. I still don’t understand it. Basically, you’re given a prompt (usually a question about a passage you’ve read), and they want you to write about the topic but also around the topic. It was very confusing for me. There are five 5 page essays due in the semester, and rough drafts due in between. In class, it was mostly peer editing; which, I also didn’t understand because no one knew what they were doing so how could we possible give advice to each other? I didn’t take Calc 2, but it’s certainly harder than Calc 1, and is not an easy ride. If you can help it, I would take Chem or Bio separate years. Like take one this year, and take another sophomore year. Those are 2 hard sciences I don’t recommend taking together. This is your freshman year too; you gotta go out and make memories! Don’t hole yourself up in your dorm studying. And you’ll want to get acclimated first before you start all the hard stuff.

TLDR; yes, it’s too heavy imo, but everyone is different. Remember to have fun!