<p>I'm just looking for some input into the difficulty, convenience, etc. of my schedule. It almost seems too easy, but then again i'm just going to be a freshman, so what do I know:</p>
<p>I know that MWF will be intense (especially W), but should I be fine considering i'll have lots of extra time TR? Also, can anyone give me any insight as to the typical intensity of these intro classes (considering I've never taken philosophy or psychology before, so i dont know what to expect). Thanks!</p>
<p>oh, and I should probably add that I'm a biology major (but APed out of intro bio).</p>
<p>I'd add something like English (if required) or a "fun" class, like a sport class (see if your school offers these...mine has just about everything--bowling, golf, walking, swimming, tennis, etc.) or a Sex Ed class or something like that. Hopefully something that meets on TR. </p>
<p>I'm surprised your MWF classes go over an hour. Most schools I know of go 50 minutes if it meets 3 days a week.</p>
<p>ouch.. wednesday looks like its going to be a killer. i had T/TH like that last semester and it got so tiring becuase there was no time to just chill or even eat a full meal. </p>
<p>depending on what school you go to and your professor, the intro classes cant be expected to be THAT bad. expect a lot of reading, expecially for philosophy, and just a lot of paper writing. at least you get to sleep alot and relax and get work done T/TH</p>
<p>you should be able to do it for one semester. then youll realize its not so fun and aviod it for the rest of your four years</p>
<p>Unless the philosophy class is a logic class, you're probably going to be reading things that are about as difficult as Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy" or maybe a little harder. (There are versions of this available online. It's shown up in almost every Introduction to Philosophy syllabus I've ever seen. It is not likely to show up on an ethics syllabus.)</p>
<p>You're not going to be asked to read as much as you might be in other classes, but you're going to be reading things that are more difficult, and you'll be taking longer per page. You should budget your time accordingly.</p>
<p>Lectures are going to be geared to teaching you how to read philosophy, summarizing the arguments the philosophers are making in your texts, and giving you context. You're going to be better able to use the lectures if you have already struggled with the assigned text before it comes up in class. In lectures and discussion sections (if you have them), you may find that you are expected to speak. That's because doing philosophy is not just memorizing a bunch of things and regurgitating it later: you have to grapple with the issues, and that's something that your professor and/or TA will want to see you do.</p>
<p>Evaluation is likely to be exams and/or papers. You may get some true/false and short answer questions on exams, but the bulk is likely to be essays. In essays and papers you're going to be asked to explain the arguments of one or more philosophers and evaluate them critically. (I TA'd some philosophy classes awhile back. Plenty of really good students would end up doing badly on a midterm exam or paper because they'd never been asked for critical evaluation.) Critical evaluation is going to include things like whether you find a philosopher's argument convincing or unconvincing and why.</p>
<p>You will not be expected to agree with the professor about whether arguments are convincing. Philosophy is a subject in which most questions are never completely dealt with, and people are still engaged in trying to deal with arguments raised 2000 years ago. You will be expected to offer an argument in favor of your position, whether or not you agree with the professor.</p>
<p>Psychology wasn't too hard for me. It was just a lot of reading and memorizing, but nothing too intense. Chemistry can take up a lot of time.</p>
<p>Isn't that only 12 credits? I'd maybe think about adding another class like english or another biology class (not intro, but there are other ones that are basic biology).</p>
<p>You'll probably end Wednesdays wanting to shoot yourself. I don't know what chem lab is like at your school, but it was exhausting at my school (not least because we had 5-hr chem labs instead of 3-hr ones). Will you be able to stay alert for your lab after three classes in three different fields? This might be doable for a couple of weeks but will become exhausting very quickly. </p>
<p>Philosophy and psychology are reading-intensive classes. What do you do in your freshman seminar? Will that be reading-intensive?</p>
<p>You'll probably be "fine" in terms of getting your work done, since your Tuesdays and Thursdays are almost completely free, but you'll probably wake up on MWF wondering why you decided to do this to yourself.</p>
<p>Depending on what kind of workload you had in high school, a fifth class might be quite doable. But then again, you might want to use some of that extra time to devote to extracurriculars or something.</p>
<p>Thanks so much everyone for all the responses--they're all really helpful.</p>
<p>As far as credit wise, my school is kinda weird--each class is just considered a single credit and 4 semester hours. So I'm taking 4 credits and 16 hours. And I'm not able to add another class without paying more because the max. you can take at no additional cost is 4.75 credits.</p>
<p>And yeah I wonder why MWF classes are over an hour at my school... odd, because technically then i have more class time for MWF classes than TR ones.</p>
<p>nontraditional--thanks for the info on philosophy. That sounds kind of intimidating cause I've never taken a class thats anything along the lines of what you described, but hopefully ill survive lol. Should be interesting...</p>
<p>By 4:00 on Wed., you're going to be starving. I don't have to take a lab class because of AP credit, so I don't know how that will play out, but three classes in a row M/F will be fine. You get used to it, and by 12:50, you'll be happy to be done for the day.</p>