English Classes?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>I'm going to be a freshman and although I'm in no way dead set on any major, I'm currently looking into anthro and will probably take 2 anthro classes first semester. Would adding a course in literature to this (plus lithum and UW) be too much? I've heard lithum can be a chore with reading, and I'm a really slow reader (30-40 pages an hour). Are there any lit courses that aren't so page-heavy? </p>

<p>Also, in general, does taking an English elective over, say, a social sciences course necessarily mean you're going to have more reading? I've heard from a lot of people that anthro, soc, polisci, etc. are some of the most reading-intensive courses on campus.</p>

<p>Last thing - anyone have tips for speed reading? I know it's too late to get a course or anything so any general hints or suggestions would be great</p>

2

<p>I'd say that if you're a slow reader, and you're planning on taking two anthro classes, an English lit class, and LitHum in your first semester, you will probably find the reading load too heavy. Also, while UW is more writing than reading-intensive, you still do a lot of reading (long essays, many of which can be dense).</p>

<p>Also, don't forget that all those classes will require writing. For me, UW was one of the most time-consuming classes I took in my first year due to its regular, unavoidable homework assignments (each of which took anywhere from an hour to three hours to do) and the four major writing assignments. </p>

<p>A lot of people don't do all the LitHum reading assignments, and your class will almost certainly not manage to cover everything that you're supposed to. If your professor is particularly lenient, s/he may also lighten the reading assignments, but don't count on it. </p>

<p>If you're bent on taking that courseload, I suggest taking a drama, short fiction, or poetry lecture, since all three types of works are much shorter than novels. However, even in a poetry class, you can be hit with a ton of poems at the same time and/or longer, denser critical readings. Use Culpa (CULPA</a> - Columbia Underground Listing of Professor Ability) to search the classes you're interested in and see the workload comments to make your decision.</p>

<p>I haven't taken any social sciences classes yet, so I can't comment on the social science vs. English comparison. However, my friend took an intro anthro class, and in the first week, she had to read the equivalent of a pretty dense, ~200 page book (from what I saw, and this is probably not representative of all assignments). I would tentatively venture to say that on average, social science readings are probably more difficult to get through.</p>

<p>Instead of taking so many reading and writing-intensive courses, you might want to replace English or one of your anthro classes with a science/math elective to fulfill that requirement or a foreign language class.</p>

3

<p>
[quote]
I'm going to be a freshman and although I'm in no way dead set on any major, I'm currently looking into anthro and will probably take 2 anthro classes first semester. Would adding a course in literature to this (plus lithum and UW) be too much? I've heard lithum can be a chore with reading, and I'm a really slow reader (30-40 pages an hour).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You will cry your first week from all the reading. Hard.*</p>

<p>*In the anthro courses i've taken (2), there are generally always required readings and suggested readings. The req'd readings tended to be 20-40 pages per class per book (1 class I took had 2 required books). The suggested readings tended to be 10-50 pages in books and maybe 10-20 pages of other material such as essays, first hand sources, etc...</p>

<p>You should note that it is NOT necessary to do ALL the reading for any anthro course tho (or, for that matter, english [I would bet]). Assuming you are good at understanding concepts and can form coherent arguments around them, you can easily get a B with cramming only the required reading into reading week. However, if you want an A, you will need to do it all and keep up on it throughout the semester in addition to going over lectures, etc....</p>

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<p>Cool, thanks. I'm definitely more than nervous for the courseload, but I've been communicating with my adviser who is recommending I take like 6 classes and then drop 1 or 2 during the shopping period.</p>

<p>Random question...why does it say Jeff Sachs' "Challenges of Sustainable Development" has 0/200 students in it? I double checked and its for the fall term. Do they not open up registration for his class until the fall, or has he really gotten unpopular?</p>

<p>Also, do you know how much work is involved with any of the following:
19th Century Novel in Europe (N. Dames)
Human Species – Its Place in Nature (J. Shapiro)
Major Debates in the Study of Africa (M. Mamdani)
Intro to Comparative Politics (M. El-Ghobashy)
Origins of Human Society (S. Fowles)
Post-1945 American Lit (Posnock)</p>

<p>These are the courses I'm deciding between, for the most part.</p>

<p>Thanks again! I'm a little over-eager for school, as you can probably tell, but this kind of stuff is actually fun for me</p>

5

<p>
[quote]
I've heard lithum can be a chore with reading, and I'm a really slow reader (30-40 pages an hour).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>wow, if that's slow then i read at a snail's pace</p>

<p>
[quote]
Last thing - anyone have tips for speed reading? I know it's too late to get a course or anything so any general hints or suggestions would be great

[/quote]
</p>

<p>skip pages? look up what the important sections are and make sure u understand them? </p>

<p>....most people just don't do the reading altogether though so if you actually do the reading (or even the majority of the reading) you will be way ahead of the curve during discussions <-- i'm talking about lit hum here, not sure how applicable this is to higher level english/literature classes</p>

<p>
[quote]
Random question...why does it say Jeff Sachs' "Challenges of Sustainable Development" has 0/200 students in it? I double checked and its for the fall term. Do they not open up registration for his class until the fall, or has he really gotten unpopular?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>this is a good question... your guess that it has gotten unpopular though is probably wrong....i would have to say that they probably didn't add the class until recently (they probably had to chase him down to see what time he'd be able to teach it, hence the horrible 8:45am time slot) so noone has actually gotten a chance to register for it yet since registration takes place during a set window in the early part of the second half of the semester. Don't get too excited about getting into this class though since i'm sure that freshmen will be the first to get booted once it fills up....which it probably will since sachs is like a celebrity. Also another sign that this course has only been added recently is the fact that the discussion sections aren't even up.</p>

6

<p>For past English class syllabi, go to the department website. There's a syllabus archive in the courses section (you might have to do some clicking around to find it, but the link will show up in the left-hand bar). I'm pretty sure there's at least one syllabus for a class taught by Dames. I don't recall details, but my impression of Dames (assignment-wise) is that his paper length requirements are shorter than many other professors'.</p>

<p>Alternatively, you can log into Courseworks (courseworks.columbia.edu) and search for past syllabi (but they may not always be available).</p>

<p>Oh yeah, and people still use SparkNotes for LitHum, at least for the summaries. So you can always resort to that. But many people don't even make pretenses of having read the text.</p>