<p>I have a question for helpful advisers:</p>
<p>There’s a super difficult but REALLY REALLY interesting/perfect-sounding course (Anth1810 - Language and Power) that I want to take.</p>
<p>But, I don’t want to flunk out of first semester. Does anyone have suggestions of easier courses that would act as a counterbalance to a course with a heavy workload?</p>
<p>Or is taking such a dense class a stupid decision?</p>
<p>Danke :D</p>
<p>If you think a class is interesting, go for it! If there are no pre-reqs, you should be OK with registering for it. Remember that there is shopping period for the first two weeks of each semester to test classes out, and also, you can take any class you want on a pass/fail basis (S/NC), to help with the anxiety of grades. It’s pretty rare to fail a class, and if you’re interested in it, it’s even rarer, I would guess.</p>
<p>franglish is right–go for it! If you’re even unsure a while past shopping period, you can always take it S/NC. (The deadline to declare ABC/NC, S/NC, or audit for a particular class is later on.)</p>
<p>There are other language-related anthro options though. There’s that Language and Singing FYS. I understand that it’s kind of late, but that doesn’t mean you can’tshop it and try e-mailing the professor; I’ve had friends this past year who’ve weaseled themselves into another FYS. There’s also that intro linguistic anthro course (maybe ANTH0800?) offered in the spring if you can wait.</p>
<p>There are a bunch of “guts” at Brown (easy classes) that would fill your needs. They’ve been discussed on this forum a few times, so a search might uncover those threads. I remember the ones from my years at Brown, but I’m outdated.</p>
<p>I just checked out the anthro course on Critical Review. It said: “A college-level course in anthropology is required, but some reviewers also recommended a background in linguistic anthropology and general ‘skills in reading dense theory.’” And I noticed that no freshmen took the class last year – mainly juniors and seniors.</p>
<p>Some teachers will waive prereqs and others won’t. My daughter tried to take a class last year, and the prof would not waive a requirement, even after she went and spoke to him. This one clearly has a prereq, and the students seemed to think it was important to understanding the material.</p>
<p>The issue might not be the workload – but whether you would get more out of the class after having taken other classes first. Based on the Critical Review comments, a lot of the workload comes from the amount of time it takes to do the very dense reading, on top of the number of written assignments. I don’t know your HS background, and how much dense reading you’ve done, but if your high school was not extremely rigorous I’d be wary of taking this class.</p>
<p>The catalog this year, both printed and Banner, don’t mention any prereqs for that specific course. </p>
<p>I think I could deal with the reading; that was pretty much my strength in high school.</p>
<p>Also, thanks for reminding me about pass/fail. That makes me happy!</p>
<p>According to the Anthropology department website:</p>
<p>“Prerequisite: At least one college-level course in socio-cultural anthropology. Students who have not taken such a course but can demonstrate, to the instructor’s satisfaction, that they have equivalent background knowledge may enroll with permission of the instructor.”</p>
<p>This isn’t listed on Banner or Mocha, but it may be worth thinking about. The description, however, has been changed, so this is likely not the most recent version. Definitely shop it, talk with the professor, and so forth. The professor is not always right (I’ve had a professor give me trouble about an override for a course whose material I’ve covered because he didn’t believe me), but his/her opinion would be important to consider.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is that college is not high school - chances are, you could handle the course. The question is - can you handle this course, your other 3, and adjusting to college life? Shop it definitely, get a syllabus…but you’ll have 3 more years if you decide that it’ll be too much at first. Part of college is challenging yourself and discovering your limits, and failure often happens through that. As long as you believe you can handle the work, I say go for it, but try not to overextend yourself needlessly in your first semester.</p>