<p>I'm a first year, and I was wondering.. so do GE classes have people from all years (first through fourth)? Wouldn't that count against people who were first years, as myself, since they're probably less proficient in writing skills, etc? And the curve would be more harsher for them? I'm in a history class, with ruiz, by the way.</p>
<p>Also, I am extremely confused. The teacher passed a syllabus with requried readings for week 1.. and he wrote a list of books we should see "on reserve"...but He only told us to buy 3 requried books, and now there's a whole list of them?? I don't even know which pages/chapters to read.</p>
<p>Haha, you guys are so adorably (NOT!) clueless.</p>
<p>“On reserve” means that they’re reserved at the library, so if you want take them for a couple of hours, you can. You can’t check them out, though, I think.</p>
<p>Books that are on reserve can be checked out for two hours at a time, and you can take them out if you’d like. However, if you check out a book that’s on reserve within one hour (?) of library desk closing then you can keep it overnight. You’ll just have to turn it in first thing in the morning. For example, my friend checked out a reserved book at 9:30 PM from the Engineering library, and he took it home and returned it before 8:30 AM the next day.</p>
<p>As a history major, I can tell you that history classes don’t have curves, so it doesn’t matter who you are as long as you work and read the material. You can take GEs whenever you want, so there will always be a mix of different years, but this seldom makes a difference in north campus (social sciences, humanities) classes.</p>
<p>Well, for certain GE classes, you will find people from all years. I think this would be the case here because Ruiz is an awesome professor. The thing is, for a lot of the GE classes, it doesn’t take much to get that A. I took another class with Ruiz, and it was not difficult at all; he won’t give you difficult prompts and confusing material to digest. Like someone said, this history class is not on a curve, so as long as your writing skills are up to snuff, you will probably get a good grade. </p>
<p>Oh, and there are manyyyyy upperclassmen who can’t write to save their lives.</p>
<p>You could use the reserves at Powell, but if you want to study when you want and whenever you want, then its not a good idea. It does save money, but whenever you want to study, you have to go to Powell (and someone may be using the reserves when you get there).</p>