@Stradmom, and all this time I thought I got a real education at Brown :-S
Liberal arts schools aim to help people become well-rounded. Well-rounded people tend to be healthier and more social. Single-tracked people who are focused on becoming multi-millionaires may not be too happy in liberal arts schools.
Instead of being furious and bitter, try to find some value in the class. You WILL hate it if you tell yourself even before you start that you will. Sometimes it is the journey between “point A to point B” that is more meaningful than the destination. You will enjoy life better if you can learn to appreciate the journeys in life.
@iwannabe_Brown ??
Nobody said you didn’t.
There is no such thing as a useless class; learning is always worthwhile.
You have no idea when knowledge will come in handy. It might come in handy every day, occasionally, or for the odd request at work; it might draw people to you at a party; it might impress others in an interview; it might win a game show for you.
Regardless of its application, knowledge itself is power… because it makes you better. It helps you realize the full potential, the manifest destiny, of your cognitive faculties.
While you still can, take advantage of what your school offers and learn everything you can. You’ll improve yourself by doing so.
^^This. And if you don’t agree with prez, then maybe a liberal arts college/small college was not the way to go. State schools & universities give you a lot more options for the gen eds, but some you just have to deal with. Everyone at Ds big state U now has to take a speech/public speaking class plus some kind of class on non-western culture (English, history, art or religion). And a 10 page paper in a college class is not that much, really.
@stradmom, you implied that taking these other classes are what constitute “a real education,” and that OP’s desires to not have gen ed requirements is better suited for a trade school. I, at the encouragement of Brown University, used the same approach as the OP (albeit with different opinions about different topics than his) in pursuing my undergraduate studies. Therefore you’re implying that my (and Brown’s) philosophy about curriculum design does not lead to “a real education,” and therefore what I did at Brown was not “a real education.”
Deliberately misconstruing someone’s argument is not a sign of an excellent education.
It is the onus of the writer to make sure one’s point is articulated clearly. You need to be wary of valid yet unintended interpretations. That might be easier if you focus more on the content of your argument and less on your insults.
It does sound like the OP wants a trade school.
But as the child of a tradesman, I take issue with the idea that a trade or a trade school isn’t a “real education.” It’s a different type of education, but one none the less. No, it isn’t a liberal arts education… by definition.
I’m still in high school but I do think you have a point though can you not take those extra subject? I mean can you drop them if you don’t really need them ?
There are always choices in life. Not always choices we want, but choices.
You chose to attend a school that had core requirements. You could change that choice. You could opt out of college entirely, or choose to attend a school with fewer core requirements. Of course, those choices may bring about higher expenses, or an uncomfortable change from an environment in which you’re comfortable, but you do have a choice.
No one is “forcing” you do to anything.
For mythology, it is used today in pop culture…see Harry Potter for example.
http://www.jaymansfield.com/words/Potter.htm
Maybe it would be good for someone like Donald Trump to be familiar with history…then he would know how horrible it was for the Japanese-Americans to be interred just like he wants to do to Muslims today.
Beowulf was written before 1660 and then recently made a movie about it.
Some of the “useless” classes I took ended up being some of the most valuable. As a STEM-minded person, I also don’t particularly like writing long papers, but the writing class I took this semester really did improve my writing skills (which are pretty important, no matter what field you’re in).
Next semester, try to choose some courses that satisfy gen ed requirements that sound interesting to you - and don’t go into them with the mindset that they’ll be useless and boring.
Actually, I think @stradmom wasn’t referring to gen eds specifically but was more broadly referring to a broad liberal arts curriculum, which Brown espouses themselves:
[iWhat does it mean to be broadly educated? The first Western universities conceived of the liberal arts as seven distinct modes of thought, three based on language (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), and four on number (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). While this structure has changed over the centuries, the basic concept has endured. A modern liberal arts education is still defined in terms of a core curriculum comprised of several areas of knowledge…A liberal education implies breadth and depth: basic knowledge in a range of disciplines, focused by more concentrated work in one. These goals are common to all liberal arts institutions.*
Brown is a liberal arts institution that emphasizes a liberal, broad education. Sure, there are no general education requirements, but you construct a curriculum with the guidance of your professors, and curriculum documents say directly that Brown undergrads are encouraged to keep an open mind and to take classes in a wide variety of fields to broaden their knowledge. Brown’s own curriculum document, “Liberal Learning at Brown,” emphasizes that Brown undergrads take classes to develop their speaking and writing, learn about differences between cultures, evaluate human behavior, learn what it means to study the past, experience scientific inquiry, develop a facility with symbolic languages, and other things…that are essentially the core of a liberal arts education. The only difference is that they don’t have strict divisional requirements, but a Brown student is unlikely to take only classes in their own major or field.
Modern bachelor’s degree programs are largely liberal arts educations, and most reputable universities espouse a broad, liberal way of learning. The original purpose of a university education wasn’t simple vocational preparation - it was to prepare citizens to function in a democratic society and be an active participant in civic life. The word “liberal” means “worthy of a free person.” The was that a free citizen should know how to read and write, think critically, defend oneself in court, participate in public debates, and take place in the vibrant cultural life of a free society…and that meant education in the arts, sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
Somewhere along the way, employers decided that having employees with a liberal arts education was a good thing - because they were adaptable, able to think critically and logically, analyze information, communicate well, etc. So the BA/BS became a requirement for many jobs, and so now a lot of undergrads think of college as a vocational requirement for employment rather than a well-rounded education.
But the other thing, OP, is that you have no idea what you’ll need in the future. You may have selected a major and a career for now, but your interests and tastes may change in the future and you don’t know what might emerge as useful later on. I was a psychology major in undergrad with an interest in math who took some additional math classes; later in, it turned out that the psychology could get pretty stats-heavy, and I developed an interest in research methods and statistics, and having the extra calculus and linear algebra was pretty helpful. I had to take an honors philosophy course in my freshman year, and I remember that it greatly enhanced my logical and critical thinking skills despite me not being overly excited about the readings. I took a couple of history classes and learned a lot of interesting stuff…that is absolutely tied to present-day tensions and situations around the world and gives some context to current conflicts, which helps me evaluate public debate and political candidates with a more measured eye.
The other thing is that exploration may define or narrow or sharpen or expand what you like. You may think you want to major in X until you take a few courses in Y and love it - and maybe you change your major, or add Y as a minor, or do an internship in Y and find a way to combine it with X in your career.
The OP should have gone to a trade school.
Indeed, that is different and not clear in “trade school vs. real education.” I wonder to what extent OP’s feeling that these other topics are useless is due to the specific courses. I find the concept of studying history to be quite important, but I find the majority of history classes to be boring, uninteresting, and a waste of my time. Similarly the study of literature is important, but I doubt the specific lit course OP was taking is that important. In high school, I didn’t have the flexibility I did in college and so I thought I hated history and english but in fact, I just hated those specific history and english courses. If OP has little flexibility in his college courses, he may not have come to that realization that it’s the specific courses themselves that are useless, not what the courses represent.
College represents a small subset of your lifelong learning. I’m glad I got to take advantage of that environment to really learn what I wanted to learn most and by focusing on the topics that interested me most, I learned the skills so that when I need to understand something that I didn’t encounter in college, I can do so. Those skills can be taught in a wide variety of contexts though (which of course is why most schools use gen eds and not core curricula). The limiting reagent in your college course selection should be the number of courses you are able to take not the number of interesting classes offered at your school, and every course you do take comes at the expense of not being able to take something else. The person best suited to decide which courses are best for you and your goals is you.
While gen eds are certainly better than a true core, they are still problematic at many schools where only certain classes count or there are caps on the number of classes you can take in a single department.
I was an ScB double major at Brown, and 28/32 courses were spent satisfying my two concentrations. Very, very few other schools would have allowed me to do what I did because they would say my education wasn’t “broad enough.” I was very judicious in choosing which schools I applied to. I didn’t apply to any school without an in depth look at its course catalog. I would argue that my ScB Biology and Classical Studies double major gave me a very broad education, encompassing biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, sociology, anthropology, history, visual arts, religious studies, foreign languages, literature, theater, military science, and architecture. That’s arguably 14 different disciplines but on my transcript it’s only 5 departments, only one of which isn’t STEM. One of the other regulars on the Brown forum mentioned how he took classes from a much larger variety of departments and many non major courses, but in his opinion, his course of study was no broader than mine because all those “extra” classes actually tied heavily back to his main course of study (unintentionally done by him at the time). The problem is most people would look at our two transcripts and say that my education was too focused and his was far more diverse.
Seems like the OP’s problem is having made a poor choice about which college to attend. The OP should be able to choose among various electives, if choice is what he or she seeks.
One of the best reasons for taking “useless” classes i have ever heard is: Based on your present ignorance, you don’t know you don’t know it until you need it.
this site is actually a good explanation of this:
http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2014/10/03/learn-useless-things/
You take the classes because all schools publish a 4 year plan that you should have been able to look at and therefore the school assumes it is not torture to take them. You take the classes because you want the degree, not to be highly entertained at school If you really think a class is hard, hard, you take that class because you are obviously not proficient in that (critical reading and writing are essential skills). You want the degree because you think it will lead to a better career, and you don’t want to work at Walmart. Your lit before 1600 class prof was likely kidding, he doesn’t get paid extra to bore you to tears, he’s probably actually interested in the material and hopes you will be too.
There are so many colleges and majors out there that cater to every type of person and their preferences, seems like you twice have proven unable to read the catalog…
You can spend your life having lots of complaints, but … well, sometimes you just have to grin and bear it. Or take a gap year and work at Walmart or even travel with backpack over Europe and see what the real world requires of you, which is likely a lot more time and effort than you are putting in now (40 hours a week every week is a lot of hours, having no clean underwear and no place to sleep because your train was delayed isn’t real fun, etc). Come back wanting to learn something and go to a school that wants to help you learn it…
You are wasting time, money, energy and other people’s time now.