<p>hi guys,
what good does joining one of the Michigan Learning Communities bring?
i heard its very time consuming but does give you a couple of credits. and if i'm not wrong, it might be a way of getting you into the dorm you'd like. eg.writing class for Alice Llyod dorm.</p>
<p>The communities differ from one another, but the main aspect is you get setup with a group of people that share your academic interests and you get thrown right into a tight-knit social group so to say. you might have to take some additional courses, but that differs from LC to LC, and you do get credits for them, how they add up again differs from LC to LC. As far as the workloads are concerned I've heard none of them are really that bad and people who join the LC are usually interested in the work they're being assigned anyways so its not a big deal to them. I'm an incoming freshman so this is only what I've heard/learned through these forums and a campus day so if any1 else has anything to add go ahead.
For me an LC works though since I'm coming from a high school where my graduating class is 32 people, so going straight into a large dorm is a major shift for me. As such an LC, I feel at least, is going to help ease that transition, and I applied for the ones I actually wouldn't mind doing work in at all(UROP and HSSP). Oh yea, and some of them do allow you to live in certain dorms, thats the point of a few of them, getting to know people and such, but not all of them do.</p>
<p>wonder how those already in the LC feel about it. i just wish the housing application could provide a little more information on the learning communities, like what freshmen can expect in terms of time commitment etc...</p>
<p>Yea the housing app really doesn't answer much of anything. It's actually quite vague, I wound up screwing mine up before I found out what the RC actually was so I just hit 'yes' when it asked if I was admitted. Fortunately I got that fixed with the housing department, I have no desire to be in the RC community. From what I gathered the work loads vary. RC for instance has a 2 year language requirement, so you stick with a high school one or pick a new one for 2 years, and you focus more on liberal arts courses. UROP averaged I think between 8-10 hours of research a week. HSSP I know is one extra course on medical issues/research of today and there is a requirement of each semester to shadow a worker in a medical/dental/social field for a day and attend (I think 3) lectures each semester from people doing medical research and do a report on their work. Again, work loads vary, time commitment will vary as well, obviously if you like what you're doing the time commitment won't be an issue I think.</p>