I’ve taken 18 credit hour semesters before and handled them fine other than one which I struggled (not grade-wise) 2 studio classes. Next semester, I was thinking of doing 4 studio classes which will meet for a total of about 24 hours a week and totals to 12 credit hours. Three of the classes are minor upper division and one is a little below. I’m in Arizona where classes are split into four levels of 100s, 200s, 300s ,and 400s for undergrad students. Three of the classes are 300s while one is 200s. Although it is only 12 credit hours, I am worried because this would be the longest class time I’ll ever take per week, which even surpasses that one semester I struggled by 3 hours. Is the workload manageable? Although studio classes appear to need more work/time compared to other classes with same credit hours, I haven’t taken much of them so can’t really judge.
How much out-of-class time do these studio classes require?
12 credit hours is supposed to correspond to 36 hours of work per week. If you are in class for 24 hours per week, that means that 12 hours per week of out-of-class work will make the workload as expected for the 12 credit hours. However, if the out-of-class work takes up more than 12 hours per week, then the total workload will be more than what 12 credit hours is supposed to correspond to.
My fine art major kid found studio art classes to require a significant amount of studio time outside of class, much more than 3 hours per week (12 hrs/4 classes). If you have to rush through assignments and don’t have time to fully develop your art, you will be shortchanging yourself as an artist and those classes will be a waste. I would suggest limiting your schedule to 2 studio art classes per term and then take 2 classes that are less time consuming.
Talk to your professors and adviser about it.
What is the recommended curriculum for your major at your college?
This sounds like it may be too much.