<p>McPucks,</p>
<p>You are truly splendid. Sorry if I came off as annoying, but I’ve been wallowing around in the course catalog and going “I’d love to take that!” at every other course.</p>
<p>I’m torn between physics, engineering, and neuroscience. I figured that if I couldn’t decide, I’d sign up for Eng 101 to see if I like the stuff. </p>
<p>And thank you thank you thank you!</p>
<p>Haha I opened up a can of worms here…well all your teachers and parents can thank me later…haha. :D</p>
<p>Keep in mind that if you can’t get into an ESS class, you should still go to the first class and subsequent classes. A LOT of people either decide not to attend or drop out of their ESS classes before the semester gets very far along. Often if the class is full you’ll be able to get a spot a little further down the road, and in the meantime you can get a little structured exercise.</p>
<p>@Brittany - Engineering has a lot of requirements, so if you’re torn, definitely take engineering 101 so you can at least get started on the engineering ladder. From what I understand it’s hard to switch into if you don’t start right away. </p>
<p>And do try to keep one class slot open in your schedule for something new and exciting. I took a history course on a whim the spring of my first year and it completely changed the course of my whole life (dramatic, but true!). Be open to new things. This is college, one of the few times in your life where can experiment without penalty.</p>
<p>Brittany - I have a good friend who’s considering engineering and physics, and she’s taken I think two classes in each plus an astronomy class if I remember correctly. I can ask if she’d be willing to talk to you if you’d like!</p>
<p>But yeah, if you’re interested in eng take ENG 101 your first semester. It is rough but there’s a lot of support and it will really help you figure out if it’s something you want. The intro neuroscience class is offered in the spring, so you could take a psych class in the fall if you wanted to get some idea of it earlier than that.</p>
<p>Questions of my own - </p>
<p>Anyone have experience with the French department? Who do I want for probably intermediate (haven’t taken the placement test yet)? Conversation practice is more important to me than writing or reading, because a) I did a lot of that in high school and b) my main goal in retaking French is to go abroad. Thanks!</p>
<p>I hate to break it to you, but the nature of college French (of basically ALL college Romance languages) is that you’re going to be doing a lot of writing and reading. That’s because if you keep going with French in college, you’re eventually going to be taking French literature courses and you need to be prepared to read and write papers in French. Also, if you go abroad, you’ll need to have strong reading and writing skills because all of your classes and homework will be in French at either the Smith program in Paris or in Geneva (if you go to Senegal, you’ll be doing some French but also learning a lot about the local language), and they really focus on preparing you to go to one of the Smith abroad programs throughout your time in the French department. </p>
<p>However, every French class has a conversation section, kind of like a lab for French students. And you’ll be doing projects in class like making videos and giving presentations that require you to to converse, so you’ll get to practice that too. </p>
<p>For Intermediate French it doesn’t matter too much which teacher you get, the courses are very standardized (Smith has been teaching French since literally forever. They are pretty good at it at this point), so you’ll get the same with most profs. I found it useful to take it from a professor who spoke English as their first language, versus a professor who was a native French speaker. The American professor understood well where the French grammar would trip up an English speaker, cause she had learned it herself as a second tongue. My native French professor was more likely to say, “I don’t understand the problem. It’s perfectly clear.” when we would complain that we weren’t getting something.</p>
<p>THat’s why I love the mentored languages. WHICH YOU ALL SHOULD CONSIDER TAKING.
THe emphasis is completely on speaking and you soak up the language so quickly.
YOu can take, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Yoruba, Swahili, Indonesian, Arabic(you need to take Smith Arabic first), or Hindi. </p>
<p>Any questions? PM ME. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THEM</p>
<p>only a few courses from Biochemistry. I wonder if smoth does not have much biochemistry students?</p>
<p>getinsmith. I have a good friend who’s a biochem major. IIRC, most of your classes are either in bio, chem or neuroscience. Try looking up major requirements and seeing what department they’re in</p>
<p>thank you very much.</p>
<p>teenage_cliche: It would be lovely if you could ask your friend what her physics and engineering classes entail. I suppose I mean; what kind of work is she doing? In physics, is she mainly working math problems? Is she always in the lab? </p>
<p>I know I want to to pursue a science, but I also desire something interdisciplinary. Physics fascinates me and I spend the majority of my time reading about quantum mechanics and such, but I fear that I don’t have the heart to get into the nitty gritty mathematical stuff. Engineering seems more… hands on/practical yet still fascinating. I just haven’t had ANY exposure to the stuff.</p>
<p>S&P: Thanks for your input. What you’re saying about having a native English speaker makes sense to me, so I’ll try to seek that out. Though it may end up being more about whoever is 9 AM, unfortunately, because there’s another class I need to take later Monday morning.</p>
<p>Brittany: I sent her a Facebook message. I’ll let you know! And don’t worry; pretty much everyone else is in the same boat of having some idea of what they want to study but not knowing the specifics.</p>
<p>@Brittany, don’t get the idea that engineering is not math-intensive. My son had to take some “basic” engineering courses at the Coast Guard Academy(he was a government major, lol) and there was plenty of math involved! :eek:</p>
<p>Bossf51: Oh I wasn’t saying that Engineering was math-free! I’m well aware of the math involved with both subjects. It’s simply that in physics, I’m afraid of winding up in the bottom of a university with a pencil and calculator doing math problems for the rest of my life. With engineering, I expect to be doing math + hands on stuff that will allow me to draw knowledge from multiple areas.</p>
<p>OK…nm ;)</p>
<p>Brittany-I’m a Math major who spends most of her time in classes with Engineers and Physics majors.
Here’s my two cents. A TON of Engineering is Physics or Math classes. There are Engineering classes of course, but a good bit of your course work will be in Math classes and in Physics classes. Also, Engineering is a bit of an all consuming major. You really don’t have a ton of time to go abroad or pursue other things. I’m not saying you CAN"T, you just need to wisely budget your time</p>
<p>Physics, while not a walk in the park, is less classes than Engineering. Most of your classes will be in Math or Physics for the major. The math classes will be “math” of course, but your Physics classes are pretty hands on and pretty cool stuff. Also, if you do some upper level physics, you can do some cool astronomy stuff. The only downside is that physics is a super small major, and sometimes some of your core classes are only taught at Mount Holyoke or Amherst. </p>
<p>Also, if you’re a physics major you can still take a good number of engineering classes to suit your likes/dislikes.</p>
<p>if we don’t register for classes until we get there, how do we get our books on time?
sorry if this is a dumb question. :P</p>
<p>You buy your books in the bookstore on campus, or you order them online once you’re registered and then you wait for them to be delivered. You register before classes actually begin, so you will have a few days of lead time, and you won’t need your book on the very first day that your class meets. </p>
<p>Honestly though, for your first semester, it’s probably just as easy to buy your books used in the campus bookstore. If you end up dropping that class during the shopping period, you can easily return the books to the store for a refund, and it’s just much more convenient than buying them ahead of time. I would discourage you from buying your books ahead of time until you’re sure that you’re going to stay in that class.</p>
<p>I am an engineering major, and there are indeed a lot of requirements, but they are also very manageable (especially if you’re coming in with AP credits). Definitely take EGR 100, it’s a fun class and will give you a pretty good intro to the department. It is a class which really crescendos in work load. For the first month or so you’ll have verrry little work, but then the last month is extremely time consuming. Calc I & II are both required for both physics and egr and are prerequisites for the intro physics courses (which are required for both majors). Because of this, the first year of engineering and physics are really very similar. I don’t know that much about the neuroscience department, except I have a quite a few friends who are majors and they seem to like it.</p>
<p>If you have any questions about the EGR department feel free to ask!</p>