<p>So, I'm a high school student and I'm taking classes at community college for my senior year. We run on the quarter system, and we got our course syllabus today. I see that there are a couple of night with around 150 pages of reading and a lot of nights with 80-90 pages of reading. Is it just me or does this seem too much? In high school getting over 30 pages a night was considered overkill, and now that i see 150 pages, i think its absurd. Not to mention i am taking 21 credits (a CALC 2, ECON 1, and POLY 1, in addition to the English class Im talking about), AND i have college apps. how can i balance this out? thanks</p>
<p>Well if you’re taking 21 credits then yes, thats normal. </p>
<p>@moonlightpath first of all, the 150 pages is ONLY for the english class, and this is a quarter system to it is actually only 14 semester credits. </p>
<p>How difficult are the books?</p>
<p>@halcyonheather the books are called The Reader by berhard shlink (which is a bit easier than normal), and No country for old men by Cormac McCarthy. No country for old men is quite long is one of those action books, which i dislike (its not too hard to read, i guess its normal). We have other readings from a textbook but those are only 30 pages a night.</p>
<p>If most of those pages are from reading novels, then that’s not particularly unreasonable. Read ahead whenever you have time so that you can stay ahead of the reading.</p>
<p>No country for old men is not long, and McCarthy’s style is noted for its simplicity. English professors assign that when they want to give students a break.</p>
<p>Anyway, lit classes do have a lot of reading. In the classes I teach, we read the equivalent of a novel every 3-5 class meetings, depending on the work’s complexity.</p>
<p>No, it’d be considered rather normal if a bit on the “high” side, depending on the college you’re attending.</p>
<p>@MYOS1634 its community college, im still a high school student.</p>
<p>@WasatchWriter so, we have the finish the book, No country for old men, in 2 days. is that reasonable for your class?</p>
<p>Then yes it’s a lot for community college. Are you sure you’re expected to read it from start to finish over two days? it’s rather short and easy but it’s more what you’d expect from a top 50/100 college. On the other hand, it could well be a test to see who does the reading and they may not expect detailed reading, rather attention to large theme and movements.
Additionally, 21 credits is crazy, so I assume the problem also is all the hw you have to do.</p>
<p>No matter what, you can’t do anything about it. The professor’s well within his/her rights. You can tell the professor it seems a bit excessive, but s/he may well tell you that reading one novel per week is par for the course in college. If the professor is used to teaching at 4-year colleges, they may well tell you to get used to it and that HS students enrolled in a college class do not get any slack cut for being younger. In short, his/her reaction may not be pleasant. </p>
<p>I would have to see the actual syllabus (or a piece of it) to understand that in any meaningful sort of context. For example, in one of my classes, we might spend a week discussing a few short stories or some poems. That would look like this:</p>
<p>Mon: Short story X
Wed: Short story Y
Fri: Short story Z
Mon: Novel</p>
<p>So technically we have something “new” due on a Friday, and then a novel due 3 days later. But it’s my expectation that my students will have the stories all read by Monday of the short story week, so that they have the rest of the week to read the novel (the whole thing, BTW). So that’s 7 days to read the novel.</p>
<p>I can’t tell yet if that’s your circumstance or not.</p>
<p>@MYOS1634 why is 21 credits excessive? it is on a quarter system so that is only 14 semester credits. is that really excessive? its only 4 classes.</p>
<p>@WasatchWriter here is the week for when we are reading the book.
M 12/1 Quiz on McLeod’s “Selling Out”
Homework: Read No Country for Old Men (3-158)</p>
<p>T 12/2 Quiz on No Country for Old Men (3-158)
Homework: Read No Country for Old Men (159-309)</p>
<p>W 12/3 Quiz on No Country for Old Men (159-309)
Homework: Watch film version of No Country for Old Men </p>
<p>Th 12/4 Quiz on film version of No Country for Old Men</p>
<p>F 12/5 Interpreting Popular Culture Paper Due (1,250 words)
Discuss Final Exam
does that seem reasonable? </p>
<p>@MYOS1634 Look at the above comment i have made. that is the week for when we are reading the book. does that seem like a normal college course load?</p>
<p>
It’s not abnormal. The week in question is in December; read the book over the Thanksgiving break.</p>
<p>A lit class that meets 5 days a week strikes me as very unusual. Are you at one of those schools that compresses a semester’s worth of work into a 10 week quarter? If so, I guess you have to expect this.</p>
<p>Where do you go to school?</p>
<p>@WasatchWriter this is a community college that runs on a quarter system. i go to De Anza college, and yeah its a 12 week quarter. but do quarter system schools really compress curriculum thus making it harder? i never knew they actually compressed it. i thought they just split it into mroe classes. also u never answered my question: is this normal or is it over rigorous. </p>
<p>It looks to me like the prof. expects that you can do a big chunk of your reading over the Thanksgiving break but didn’t want to officially assign anything for those 4 days.</p>
<p>As to the workload, it seems pretty normal to me for a full college schedule (4 classes). College students spend less time in class than high schoolers but are expected to complete more work on their own. </p>
<p>It’s probably on the heavy side for a community college course on the semester system. </p>
<p>However, that would be considered a reasonable/light assigned reading load for intro classes at several respectable/elite colleges I know of. </p>
<p>During one semester, I took two 300-level seminar style classes where the combined reading load averaged around 1200-1300+ pages/week…and I was taking it with a demanding intermediate foreign language course and a computer science programming course for majors. </p>