<p>I'm trying to schedule my general chemistry labs...but they're four hours long so its hard to fit them in</p>
<p>One thing I was interested in possibly majoring in was computer science. However, I can only take compsci and chem if I schedule my chem lab from 1-5 on friday.</p>
<p>All you experienced college people, is that a horrible schedule? I'm not a huge partier but I don't want to be miserable/make it difficult to do clubs and stuff</p>
<p>Or I could wait to take computer science...but I feel like I'll be falling behind already?</p>
<p>you won’t be missing out. There are plenty of clubs and activities on college campuses. Most won’t be meeting before 5 either. It sounds like these are important classes to you, so you should take them.</p>
<p>Whenever we go somewhere for a weekend trip, we leave around 3 on a Friday. Most people are done with class around 3ish. Those that had class later just had to skip class that day, since leaving at 5 would result in horrible traffic and cause us to waste 2 more hours sitting in a car, so we would reach our destination 4 hours later than if we left at 3.</p>
<p>I almost scheduled a 4-5pm class M/W/F this semester, but I decided to change it to M/W 11-12:30. That way I would have no class on Friday and never have this issue. Plus the friday before spring break, away football game weekends, etc I would be able to leave on Thursday night and miss all traffic.</p>
<p>If you don’t foresee this being an issue, then go ahead.</p>
<p>Ive had Friday labs for three of the six semesters Ive completed so far. My chemistry labs were 5 hours long (1-6 pm), and my physics labs were 3 hours long (1-4 pm). In all those cases, Friday was the only option if I wanted to be able to take other classes. </p>
<p>To be honest, I hated the Friday labs, especially during the winter when itd be dark by the time I left lab. I also hated that I couldnt hang out with my friends on Fridays (and Id be so exhausted afterwards that all I wanted to do was watch TV and sleep), and at my school, most people have Fridays off. However, I think there were some advantages to taking Friday labs. Mainly, labs take up a huge chunk of time, and they often have very strict absence policies (for my gen chem lab, it was impossible to make up a missed lab). Therefore, regardless of how bad your schedule is for a given week, you have to go and be prepared (preparing for the lab itself can take several hours if you have pre-labs and if you have to teach yourself the theory behind the instrumentation). If you fall behind in your other classes because of lab, its much harder to catch up if your lab falls in the middle of the week than if it falls on a Friday. </p>
<p>For example, I took a physics lab on Wednesday afternoons during one semester. My very difficult bio class always had midterms on Thursdays, and I often had papers for another class due on Fridays. On weeks when I had bio midterms and papers due, the Wednesday labs were very inconvenient because they made me feel as if I were wasting my time by not studying/writing. Its true that this problem might be avoided if you always plan ahead and start studying several days ahead of time. This is actually what I did, but I also had other classes to keep up with, which made the balancing act even harder. Sure, it would have been nice to have Fridays off, but that would have made the rest of the week even more stressful for me. </p>
<p>Consider it a trade-off. Not only will the Friday lab allow you to major in what you want (which is obviously very important), but it will also be less stressful than taking it in the middle of the week (I realize that Im kind of generalizing from my personal experience here). Your Friday social life might suffer a bit, but its not like you will no longer have a weekend.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies - I think I found another time, 8 am - 12 on thursdays…its early but it will be my only early day so its not that bad and I wont have to worry about trips and such</p>