<p>Hi. Next semester im going to be taking these classes:</p>
<p>AMST203 - Popular Culture in America
BSCI105 - Principles of Biology
MATH141 - Calculus II
PSYC100 - Introduction to Psycology</p>
<p>Does anybody know what to expect from any of these classes? Are they difficult? Is it hard to maintain a high grade? Is there a lot of work/note taking? </p>
<p>Also any other comments about the class would be great!</p>
<p>Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>you should go to ourumd.edu This is a site, similar to rate-my-professors that was written by UMD students that gives breakdowns of grades for the individual professors that take the class. You can read the reviews of your profs, too. Both my D’s have found this very helpful. In general, you can count on always having homework in Calculus, (like, always)…Others can comment on the other classes better than I, but psychology will probably be a lot of reading, Biology and psych will be a lot of note-taking, Biology will be a lot of memorization, and ?? on your Culture class…</p>
<p>oh thank you so much. that really helps!</p>
<p>Like APM said, OurUMD.com is very useful, especially for seeing grade distributions and information about professors, etc., etc. One thing that I would be careful of, though, is putting too much weight on the reviews. Often the only students who might take the time to review a professor are those who are very angry or upset with the class, or those who had an absolutely fantastic time, so it’s hard to gauge the average response or opinion of the class.</p>
<p>ourumd is a godsend. most of the time you should ignore the angry people. unless there’s an overwhelming negative response.
also i just took bsci105 [and sadly i have retake cause i got a D] but do not take o’connor! nobody likes him and he’s a horrible teacher. just thought i’d put in that plug 
in any case, it’s a challenging class, so make sure you study.
psyc is easy. everyone i know that’s taken psyc100 said so. i’ll also be taking that in the fall too.
math classes are fairly hard, but if you get a good teacher, they make it intersting. if not, good luck with calc II. it’s pretty abstract.</p>