<p>I'm trying to find an easy GE requirement to fill my first semester at Cal. I might take College Writing R4B or an American Cultures class. My question is which would be easier? Are AC classes generally easier? One more problem is that I looked up the professors on RateMyProf that teach the AC classes and the few classes I would find interesting are taught by very liberal professors who would likely grade down on opinions other than theirs. I am a pretty rational conservative, and I knew that Berkeley was liberal, but I thought liberals claimed to be advocates of freedom of speech and respective differences... or is that only when you agree with them? Anyway, I want to know the degree to which this is true and if I should just go ahead and take the mildly interesting classes, submit and agree with the professor, and just take my A.</p>
<p>I’d avoid any of the College Writing classes, especially the ones worth 5-6 units. I’d recommend taking an AC class first, which was what I did (Anthropology 3AC summer). I actually don’t know if the AC classes are harder than the others or not, but I got the impression that they are.
As for the professors, it’s true that they are more liberal than the students, but keep in mind that they are professionals. For instance, in my anthro class in discussion with my professor (who graded both my midterms and my final personally), I made an argument about sweatshops that she did not like at all (I came off as a little insensitive, I think), but I still got out of the class with an A. If you’re taking your AC class during the school year, it’s your GSI’s you should be worrying about, since they will be in charge of your grade, not your professor. And, honestly, there are very few Berkeley classes where the professors hand out A’s (the curves really depend on their assessment of the entire class).
So no worries about your conservatism.</p>
<p>From what I’ve picked up, there’s not much of a difference in how easy an AC class is versus English. I know College Writing is a tough class on its own, and I’d advise against it if possible.</p>
<p>Your political viewpoint doesn’t really matter in most AC/general classes. (save GEOG 50 and similar courses) Just because you don’t agree with the prof, they’re not going to lower your grade. Now, if you wrote crap they would fail you either way.</p>
<p>Might I suggest some of the History AC courses? They seem pretty non-biased and relatively easy.</p>
<p>OK, sounds like I’m staying away from the college writing thing. I think I might be taking History of California with Klein or the IB one with Hlusko? To be honest, I’m just looking for an easy way out of these requirements because I don’t want to do too many humanities stuff at Berk.</p>
<p>TAKE HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA! I’m taking it in the fall as an incoming freshman and it may be my favorite class. It seems relatively easy compared to some of the lower division history classes.</p>
<p>IB 35AC is a great class. The professor is great.</p>
<p>yea i would also like some suggestions as to which AC classes are more interesting to take</p>
<p>killthefifi, isn’t the CA history class upper division? And it was still easy?</p>
<p>FeeFee34, yes, it’s an UD class, but it’s still easy for a variety of reasons.
The lower division classes usually are more broad and harder, while the upper divs have more of a focus on a certain part of history.</p>