<p>I'm a business major, I'm a new student in community college and I'm planning to take:
Eng 101
Communications 101
Theater 105
IS
Business 101
For those of you who have experience in college, do you think I should take five classes my first semester in college or only 4? One more thing....is taking classes five minutes apart good idea? Do professors get mad at people arriving late? </p>
<p>Assuming those are 3-credit classes, 15 credits would put you on track to graduate on time.</p>
<p>In terms of the 5 minute break - are all the classes in the same building or adjacent buildings? Yes, professors do get irritated at people arriving late (or leaving early) and you can’t count on them to stick strictly to “the bell” as teachers did in HS. I’d suggest checking with someone who is familiar with your campus to see if the 5 minutes will give you enough time.</p>
<p>Five classes for freshmen is standard at my university. Your classes look like lower level/introductory classes for the most part. I would say go ahead with it. </p>
<p>In regards to taking classes five minutes apart, I would discourage it. Unless the classes are right next to each other (and I still wouldn’t fully be supportive of the idea), you will not be able to walk to class on time and get adequate seating. Coming to class in frowned upon. Some professors may not even allow you into the classroom if you are late, thus affecting your grade for absences. </p>
<p>15 credits is just the regular number of credits you need to take each semester in order to graduate on time.</p>
<p>However, I wouldn’t recommend taking classes 5 mn apart. You’re likely to get points docked in any class under 30 for arriving late, some professors won’t let you in if you’re late, some professors don’t feel the need to “stick” to the bell (the key is the content covered, not the bell) and many classes on a college campus are 15+mn apart. So, only choose classes 5mn apart if they’re literally in the same building (preferably same floor).</p>
<p>Never mind its actually 10 minutes apart but they’re in diffrent building, I’m going to have to dash to the class</p>
<p>15 credits is average per quarter at my university so you should be fine! Even if they are in different buildings it will probably still be okay, you’ll be surprised at how little time it takes to walk from one to another. I was worried at first about making it to class on time, and even practiced with a timer going to each one and it was fine. Plus sometimes classes end a few minutes early so you’ll have even more time.</p>
<p>If the class is in a different building, you’re still going to have to run :)</p>
<p>Whether or not you can make it to your next class is going to depend mostly on where the other building is. How big is your campus? I had friends at other schools who could walk across their entire campus in ten minutes, so getting from class to class was easy. I went to a school where some lecture halls were 15-20 minutes apart while other lecture halls were 1-2 minutes apart, so some classes were easy to get to in 10 minutes where others were more difficult. The community college near me would have been fairly easy to walk to any class in ten minutes, but your school may be bigger. Can you look at a map or your school or visit to see how hard it would be? Just because they’re in a different building doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have to run or that it will be a problem.</p>
<p>You can always leave your previous class a few minutes early, or if you get to your next class late, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem but that always depends on your professor. None of my professors cared, but yours might. If it’s an issue, you could let your professor know that you have class right before this and you might be a couple of minutes late. If it’s a problem, you may want to consider dropping a class or changing your schedule.</p>
<p>And you can always try out this schedule and drop a class if you find that it’s too much. Just keep an eye on the drop date, and take a careful look at the syllabus and workload to get an idea if it’s too much work or not. If you don’t have to take this many classes for any particularly reason, you could also take one less class, and then readjust next semester once you have an idea of what the classes are like.</p>
<p>That schedule looks doable, and taking ~15 units per quarter/semester is pretty typical.</p>
<p>The 10 minutes between classes thing will depend on the school and the locations, as others have said. I go to a pretty big school where in many cases 10 minutes just isn’t enough time to get between lecture halls – I’m a pretty fast walker and there are some locations that take me 20 minutes to get to. That’s not to mention the lecture halls that are further out and are more like a 30 minute walk. On the other hand, my school has a big bike culture and that helps with getting to class, but you need to factor in traffic and time parking your bike in that case. Personally I don’t like biking because of the traffic, but depending on you and your school it might be worth looking into.</p>
<p>However, last quarter I had three classes back-to-back in the afternoon, with 10 minutes between each class. I got to each of the classes with a few minutes to spare on most days because they were located about a 5 minute walk from the previous class and were situated in such a way that the second class was right in between the first and third. Just out of courtesy though, I let all my professors know that I had back-to-back classes, and that I might either need to leave their class a little early or might be getting in a little late because of that. They were all understanding and didn’t mind those days where either of those situations happened because they knew the situation.</p>
<p>On that note, my suggestion regarding that is to ask some current students about your class locations to see if it’s doable to get to classes on time. Even if it is, I would still highly recommend talking to your professors so they at least know what’s going on. In my experience, most are pretty lenient so long as they’re aware of your situation and you’re not intentionally dawdling while getting to class…or leaving class super early just because. Also, try not to cause a huge disruption when entering or exiting. By that I mean, if you might need to leave early try to sit in an aisle seat (or at least by the exit) and if you enter late take the first available seat you can that hopefully doesn’t require climbing over several people.</p>
<p>Freshmen at my college aren’t allowed to take more than 4 classes plus an add-on approximately equivalent to a half-credit course. However, I think your schedule sounds quite doable. What’s IS? An international studies course?</p>
<p>Do classes at your school start on the hour or is time allotted for travel? My school allotted 10 minutes, and I’ve taken classes at another school that allotted 7. If your classes are in different buildings, 5 minutes is likely too short to walk from one to another. If a professor seems to have any issues with you showing up a few minutes late on a regular basis, you might try explaining to your professor that you’re not late due to sleeping in or anything, but that you have class immediately before. Most professors I know are understanding about that kind of thing, particularly if they have class in a remote building. And if it’s only a few minutes, they might not even notice!</p>
<p>You’re probably fine, especially if you’re like the average CCer (you know, hard working - maybe - and high achieving). I’m taking 17 credits this coming semester and am in the honors college. I talked to an honors professor and she said that most honors students took more than 15 hours a semester, and many petition 19 or more. None of the classes sound <em>too</em> terribly hard (although depending upon your major, weed out classes can disguise themself), so you should be fine. Good luck!</p>
<p>As for the professors angry at late students, it varies from university to university, from college to college, and from professor to professor. I know that’s vague, but some profs will be upset and sometimes your grade is attendance based, while others couldn’t care less about what you do, and still others arrive late themselves. Don’t worry. :)</p>