<p>I've heard people who have already been to orientation talking about it, and I don't really understand it. I'm in natural sciences, should I join one? Apparently it guarantees you good classes? If someone could explain what it means, benefits, and such that'd be helpful!
Thanks!</p>
<p>your referring to a freshman interest group???</p>
<p>or are you referring to that research initiative thing? if so go for it</p>
<p>Essentially a FIG is a group of students who take three classes or 9 hours as a group. They also have a 1 hour FIG seminar once a week to meet up. The benefits are that they will usually get you into the classes you want and they give you a group of familiar faces in your classes. Supposedly this is to reduce the giant school effect UT can have. I personally just had Orientation and I did sign up for a FIG primarily because it gave me a very good class schedule. I would recommend joining one unless the FIG classes dont match up with the classes you want to take.</p>
<p>i was tripping</p>
<p>Definitely join a FIG! There aren’t really any downsides to joining one. You don’t have to go to every 1-hour meeting either.</p>
<p>I heard it’s boring :P</p>
<p>It’s not bad if you end up not liking your FIG. After all, you only have to spend 1 hour a week. Plus on some days you’ll be getting free food. The reserved classes make it worth putting up with that 1 hour. Personally, I really liked it when we had our FIG meetings.</p>
<p>Yeah you don’t even have to go to FIG meetings. We mostly had speakers from various UT areas like the tutoring and career exploration centers talk about their services. We did get free breakfast sometimes though!</p>
<p>I had bio, bio lab, chem and psych with my FIG. I would definitely recommend getting in one especially if you’re in nat sci because it really helped in already having a group to study with and do labs since you’re going to be in lab groups anyway. I would’ve been lost many a time without my FIG friends. And if you want Laude for CH 301 or 302, that’s pretty much the only guaranteed way you’ll get him.</p>