<p>I assume most of you have seen the hilarious email that 'Nick' sent out in 2007 regarding gut courses. </p>
<p>Are these gut courses still easy, or has the war on guts made them into arduous, essay-filled pitfalls? Input from current Yalies would be much appreciated.</p>
<p>Here's the email for those who haven't seen it:<br>
What</a> Are The Gut Classes At Yale?</p>
<p>As you’ll learn from older students or perceptive fellow freshmen, gut classes generally go through cycles, where they stay guts for two or three years before the professors realize everyone is taking them to get an easy A- or A, and unless the professor is mailing it in at that point, they’ll increase the difficulty so that their class is taken seriously again. Strategy, Technology, and War, for example, used to be a major gut, but if you read the reviews from Fall 2009, you’ll note everyone discussed how difficult the class was in comparison to what they were expecting. Another example is Planets and Stars, which was taken by everyone expecting their easy Sc and ended up being a class that required effort to even consider doing well. Read the reviews for that, too. It wasn’t hard, but it certainly wasn’t a gut either. Talk to people when you are there, and if your roommate/suitemate is on a sports team, consult them specifically. You’ll feel kind of hollow and wasteful if you take all guts, though, just so you know. Use them to kill requirements for subjects or areas you are bad at, or to alleviate a heavy courseload (as a fifth credit in a semester if you need it, for example), not to comprise the majority of your schedule.</p>
<p>A couple things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I’m sure someone has pointed out sometime that it’s a little unlikely that a student in Timothy Dwight would have been that nasty about its universally adored master, Robert Thomas, teacher of the first course on the list. That had to be something of a joke. Don’t take the whole thing too seriously.</p></li>
<li><p>Just because a course is a gut doesn’t mean it’s bad. At all. When I was at Yale, the gut of all guts was Intro to Financial Accounting. The teachers had set it up so that if you EITHER did the homework or came to class 90% of the time, you were guaranteed a C even if you flunked the exam. (Even if you blew it off.) If you met the 90% test and passed the exam, that was a B. Getting an A required actually knowing the material. The only hard thing about the course was getting in. After the football players and the trustafarians, and their girlfriends/boyfriends, there wasn’t much room. The course was brilliantly, brilliantly designed and taught. I’m not an accountant, but I have been working with accountants for 30 years and getting kudos from them for how well I understand accounting, and it is 100% thanks to this effortless gut course.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My best friend took Rocks for Jocks to satisfy his science requirement and it changed his life. He wound up as a geology major and ultimately a full-time environmental activist with Environmental Defense. And Bio for Poets – a very popular gut – was taught by a Nobelist and was also a superb course. Don’t knock the guts!</p>
<p>Be wary of so-called “gut” classes. I took a “gut science,” Intro to Biological Anthropology, that ended up being one of the hardest courses I took last year. The professor had realized everybody was taking it for an easy science credit and made the exams ridiculously difficult.</p>
<p>ETA: Intro to Bio Anthro is on “Nick’s” list. It’s not a gut anymore. The best way to tell how difficult courses will be is to look at the evals online, but even those aren’t always accurate; my bio anthro prof. definitely changed the course from '08 to '09. When I read the evals last fall, it said it was easy; Fall '09’s evals largely say it was a pretty hard class.</p>
<p>During shopping period, do the neck test. Thick necks=gut.</p>
<p>Here’s my shameless gut anecdote: Everyone knows that the lunch table talk the first few days will be all about what classes to take, which ones have small workloads, etc. Basically gut-hunting… My junior year 2nd semester, an unbeliveable class came up. I was having a really tough load and wanted one easy class. About 4-5 days into the semester, word was getting around that the hockey team (BINGO!) had found a great gut class. It was in the PoliSci dept and I decided to check it out. I guess the first class had about 15 show up. When I got there (the third meeting) it had about SIXTY!</p>
<p>What was the class? Politics and Government of Canada.</p>
<p>Why all the hockey players? They were mostly recruits from Canada and for them: it was a basic civics class. LOL</p>
<p>Super easy class. Easy A for me. </p>
<p>HAHAHA: my superior Yale “thirst for knowledge” on full display!</p>
<p>are the online evals on the Yale website, or just various little anecdotal reviews posted by people who took the class?</p>
<p>Ah! So Master T’s classic gut class was still being taught in 2007!! I love it. </p>
<p>Back when I took it (sometime in the vicinity of 1982), it was an Art History course called “Structure of the New York Mambo.” I still remember some of Master T’s wonderful ballet-football-Yoruba analogies… and I will never forget my ‘interdisciplinary’ final exam, which consisted mostly of an audiotape of me playing a Cuban danza on the piano… and for which he gave me a much undeserved A. Those were the days.</p>
<p>@SoylentGreen12: </p>
<p>I was also wondering this but figured it out today. 
It’s at the top left corner of the OCI page (the first link on the left sidebar). Hope that helps!</p>