<p>Hear me out before casting judgement. I am extremely behind in my degree. My first year of college, I made great grades my first semester at my state university but then decided to experiment and transfer to a completely different school out of state for the second semester. I wasted time and money and most of the credits I earned are worth nothing now. I planned on going back to the second university this Fall, and I went, but a bunch of complicated things happened and I realized I didn't need to drown myself in debt. So I came back home and took this semester off. I feel like a giant mess. I'm ready to get back on track now at my original university and just focus on graduating. Its not that I'm dumb - I made all A's both semesters in school. I just couldn't figure out what I wanted. </p>
<p>So now I'm starting over. I'm a second year college student with less than 30 credits. I honestly want to cry every time I think about it. So this semester, in an attempt to catch up a little bit, I registered for 9 classes. I'm taking 5 at my state university and 3 at my community college in a dual enrollment. </p>
<p>It looks like a lot but I've organized my schedule so that I have morning classes at the community college and afternoon at the state university. So its not too much driving back and forth. They're all basic core requirements, so I honestly don't see any of them being that hard. I just need to get rid of them. </p>
<p>I don't want to still be stuck in 100 level classes next year, so my plan was finish all my core requirements this semester and over the summer. </p>
<p>Am I in over my head? I honestly think I can handle it. I really don't want to end up dropping a course. Any advice for handling a load like this? Has anyone done it before?</p>
<p>It does seem like a lot, though. Nine classes? Wow! Can’t you just take three classes at your community college over the summer or winter break? Because like FairyBag77 said, it might seem easy to handle it now, but when finals hit, you have to be working on papers, exams, projects for your class and will feel burnt out. </p>
<p>About handling a course load like that… have you checked the syllabus for each of the classes that you plan to take? That would help you determine if you should be taking 9 classes or not.</p>
<p>“I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted. So now I’m starting over.” – The question is, do you finally know what you want now? </p>
<p>If you’re shooting for A’s, it does seem like too much… but then again, I don’t really know you, your academic capabilities or goals, or how easy/difficult those classes are at your school. Just eyeballing the class names, none of them seem hard, but add together the work required for all of them (9 classes!) and it might get to be a lot. Taking 7 of those classes seems more doable.</p>
<p>Either way, key words are: time management. (Easier said than done.) No procrastinating and letting things pile up!</p>
<p>9 does seem a bit excessive. 2 biology classes + labs? x_x Seems like a recipe for disaster.
If you feel like you can handle them than go for it, but most people would crash and burn when it comes to mid-terms. Lets not even think about the finals now.</p>
<p>You’re only a sophomore, you have plenty of time to make up those 3 misses classes. Don’t do it all in 1 semester.</p>
<p>You’re probably going to be writing some papers in a lot of those classes. What are you going to do when you have 4 papers due on the same day?</p>
<p>I recommend taking 6 classes per semester over the next 3 semesters. Or better yet, just take 3 or 4 classes over the summer to catch up.</p>
<p>I thought about taking 7 classes this next semester to graduate by May. It would require 23 credits - but the class load looked like this:</p>
<p>Linear & Matrix Algebra
Statistical Theory II
Numerical Calculus (Computer Theory Course)
Applied Time Series (Statistical Modeling Course)
Experimental Design (Grad level Stats class)
Biology II w/ Lab
7th class from upper division Mathematics (Advanced Calculus, etc).</p>
<p>Needless to say, I decided to back away from that meat grinder and just graduate in August.</p>
<p>I don’t think overloading yourself is the way to make up for lost time, even if you think you can handle it. </p>
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<p>It’s not as simple as fitting all these classes into your schedule. First of all, think about the psychological toll that taking nine classes will have. I don’t how your schedule falls out, but it looks like you’ll be attending 4-5 classes per day (roughly speaking). Just sitting through those classes will be exhausting, and you won’t be absorbing much by your last class of the day. Second, even if the material content of these classes won’t be terribly difficult, don’t underestimate the amount of work you’ll be asked to do. Literature, anthropology, and philosophy classes (and probably sociology and women’s studies classes as well) require a lot of reading. The readings for anthro and philosophy can be pretty dense and dry. When do you plan on doing all the readings?</p>
<p>In my experience, schedules with no leeway will lead to hell. What I mean is that if you’re thinking to yourself, “I can totally do this as long as I start my homework as soon as I get home and as long as I do five hours of homework a night…,” then you’re already setting yourself up for a semester of disappointment and pain.</p>
<p>Does your university have summer or winter classes? The college I will go to has two summer sessions and a winter break session. You can use those to catch up some classes. They aren’t usually covered by regular scholarships, but they aren’t as costy as regular courses because they don’t last as long. You can break up the classes and still get back on track. I would see if your school offers these kinds of classes.
But if you don’t think it will be a problem for you then take the classes, but personally I won’t take more than five a semester when I go to college.</p>
<p>I’d say it seems like too much but several of those seem like easy courses, with the right professor you could count them as easy A classes (case in point, my 3 TAP courses this semester are all basically show up and get an A classes, the only reason I’m about to get a B on one of them…and that’s not gaurenteed, just a risk, is because I overslept for one day that just happened to be the day the assignment was due and lost 5 points and the guy is a hardass grader, I’ll still get an A as long as I don’t miss anymore assignments or any classes). </p>
<p>Finals week will be tough for you though, like they all have said. Find out if you can maybe work on final essays/projects early to give you more time. Professors are generally cool about that, that’ll give you time to work on them during downtime and ease the load a little come finals week.</p>
<p>9 classes IS a lot, especially when two of them have labs! Plus all the reading you have to do. Not to mention driving from school to school might not seem like a big deal now, but trust me, when you’re driving from place to place all the time it starts to drive you crazy after awhile. Soon all you’ll be thinking of is getting somewhere on time and the nightmare of dealing with all of these classes on top of that.</p>
<p>Also make sure you’re attempting this kind of schedule for the right reasons. It should be pretty easy to find a college nearby that offers most of those classes in the summer. Are you doing this because you absolutely need to and your degree depends on it? Or because of some kind of peace of mind since you’re short on credits? There’s no right or wrong way to do college. Some people go part time and don’t graduate for 6 years. Many lose credits and have to retake classes. Being short on credits isn’t the absolute end of the world. (unless maybe financial aid depends on it, then that’s a whole other story…)</p>
<p>Don’t forget that just because the content might be easy doesn’t mean the workload will be. You can still be in an “easy” class and have papers every week. </p>
<p>Also consider this: it’s always nice when you can actually get something out of the class. Don’t get yourself so caught up in checking off a to-do list of assignments for all these classes when you’re not even really taking anything away from them.</p>
<p>Can you do online classes? That would be a great option for some of these classes. I’d say either do some online or in the summer. I would never, ever recommend someone take 9 classes at once. Assuming the science classes are 4 credits and everything else 3, that’s nearly 30 hours! I don’t know of any advisor that would recommend this kind of schedule, and if you doubt that then go talk to one.</p>
<p>There’s no shame in being a little behind in school. You’re most definitely not the only one!</p>
<p>I think 9 is way too many. Rather than try to catch up in one semester, you need to space this out and take winter or summer courses instead. It’s not feasible to take 9 classes at once, especially where two of them have labs, one is a foreign language (which judging by the number you haven’t studied before or studied very little?) and three are classes with lots of reading/writing papers. You’ll have time to go to class, but you wont’ have time do any of the work. </p>
<p>What you should probably do, since you’ve registered, is attend the first day of each and get the syllabus. Find out what the expectations are, how much reading you’re responsible for, how many papers, how the finals work, etc (what if you ahve finals schedueld for the same day and time at different campuses?). Then decide which of the 9 you want to drop. I think you need to drop at least four classes from your current list.</p>
<p>If you drop make sure you do so by the first drop day so you don’t end up with a ‘W’ on your transcript for withdrawing! That’s not really a bad thing, but it is good to avoid it.</p>
<p>Drop some–that’s an enormous amount of reading and essay-writing and TWO biology labs? Come on. At least two, and at least one of them should be a bio class.</p>
<p>I think you are nuts. I have had 8 essays due in the last nine days, I’ve had to read four 300+ page novels in that time, and exams haven’t even started yet. You would have to be STUPID to do this to yourself on purpose! (And I am only taking five classes!)</p>