<p>I am planning to take SPAN 101 and 102 to fulfill the HAL requirement.
How difficult are they for someone with 1 - 2 years of basic high school spanish?
What is the workload like?
Thanks!</p>
<p>Not hard…why not just take the 200 level one?</p>
<p>Did you do the Spanish placement test? I would probably trust whatever placement you were given. Since SPAN 101 is a course for students who’ve never taken a single Spanish class I would imagine that with two years of high school Spanish you should be in pretty good shape.</p>
<p>@AsleepAtTheWheel : Do not assume that most or all Emory or any students would take placement tests honestly. Many will intentionally flunk them to be placed in a lower level. Sad, but true. </p>
<p>@bernie12 – wouldn’t have thought of that on my own, but now that you mention it, sadly I’m not surprised. My sister teaches at Tufts. She yells me stories of freshman who load up their schedules w courses they’ve already taken in high school, just to pump up their GPA. She can’t believe that they’d waste their time and their parents’ money doing so. </p>
<p>@AsleepAtTheWheel What confuses me about the AP thing, is that I have talked to many students who went to schools that would not cover the cost of taking the AP or IB exam. So they pay for it (all like 80 something dollars), get a top score, and then pay thousands to retake it. However, you must keep in mind, it isn’t about education for parents or students, it is more about “success” which is in many ways determined by grades. Getting the higher GPA and learning less is totally worth it the way it works today. Actual competence and skills are not valued so much as numbers, and employers nor professional schools have to know that the student forfeited the credit or intentionally screwed up on a placement test though apparently some colleges will put the AP/Transfer credit history on the transcript to discourage students from being soft (Princeton is one such school apparently). I suppose if employers or prof. schools could see it they would take it into account that the student is “gaming” or taking shortcuts, so many schools just remove any history of the forfeited AP credit from the transcript I think. But highered and even many of the next levels select based upon superficial or well-crafted success. </p>
<p>Challenges, setbacks, and the perseverance, lessons, skills, and competencies that come with it are hardly rewarded. You are supposed to continuously perform near perfection, at least on paper, so choosing easier tasks makes that a lot more simple, Would be nice if the incentive structure was reversed and interviews screened for actual skills beyond trumped up or temporary “people skills”. Luckily many of the companies that hire BBAs now have case interviews. But the career centers have learned to get around those by having their own mock case interviews, so that partially closes the gap between those that took more rigorous courses that required analytical thinking and those who just jumped through the hoops of easy grades and are just now learning the skills to navigate the interview through the career center. But something is better than nothing. Now, I have heard that some of the tactics some medical schools have resorted to are very interesting. No career center can really anticipate and prep for some of those. But, in general, it seems easy to get where you “need to go” without being challenged as an undergrad. </p>
<p>In my case, it has hurt in the short term (lower GPA and the short term struggles coming with it) to put myself through a challenging curriculum, but now I am benefiting as these interviews for those (in this case lab) positions that I could only dream of start rolling in. Just got one that is really awesome and completely out of left field. My level of knowledge and passion is very easy to convey in interviews (which are basically like grad. school interviews. They want to see what types of questions you ask, what your career goals are, how your knowledge is applicable to the lab or the position, and the like. It is so much easier to do when you have a solid grasp of scientific principles in several fields and experience to go along with it. Interviews are almost like fun opportunities to learn more about the work of someone else while selling your own knowledge and experience so as to fit it into that specific framework. Avoiding the “fake it until you make it” syndrome appears to be doing me some good now 
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