Seminars and course plans and the like...

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>As many of you all know, your freshman seminar professor also serves as an associate advisor to help you get through your years at MIT. What seminars are you looking at? I was really interested in 8.S67 (What is Particle Physics), but the upperclassmen have been saying really bad things about the class. Not sure what I want to stick to now. There's 8.1A8 (Time of Your Life), which seems really interesting philosophically. I hear you should pay close attention to who your advisors are. My friends tell me that in some cases, "if you listen to your advisor, you'll spend 5 years getting a degree in pottery."</p>

<p>What about course planning? Have any of you equally obsessive prefrosh been combing through your course catalogue with a spreadsheet open in an attempt to put together some semblance of a course plan you know you'll be forced to redo at least a hundred times over due to things never working out? Yeah, it's probably useless to try at this point, but it gives me something to do!</p>

<p>I have Excel'd out the wazoo putting together spreadsheet after spreadsheet. It's gotten to the point where I even have a spreadsheet with automatic highlighting that calculates units/term on the fly, etc. Example here[/url</a>]. If any of you want to waste a few hours, the spreadsheet is located [url="<a href="http://manderson.mit.edu/%7Eftp-user/genericplan.xls%22%5Dhere%5B/url">http://manderson.mit.edu/~ftp-user/genericplan.xls"]here/url</a>. Just fill in what courses you want to highlight (3 max due to Excel's internal limitations), pull up the [url="<a href="http://student.mit.edu/@8539733.21349/catalog/index.cgi%22%5Dcourse"&gt;http://student.mit.edu/@8539733.21349/catalog/index.cgi"]course&lt;/a> catalogue and degree</a> requirements and go nuts. You can even mark whether a class si CI-H, CI-M, or a graduate class. Feel free to modify it in whatever way you want.</p>

<p>As for me, I'm still struggling with it, but I think that's expected of us prefrosh. ;)</p>

2

<p>Lol - I planned a bunch of stuff out about a month ago (right after CPW). Fun fun stuff, this course planning.</p>

<p>The not so fun stuff is actually taking the courses. (Hard...hard...hard!!!!)</p>

3

<p>Course plans? You're prefrosh!</p>

<p>I haven't even picked a major yet, let alone made a course plan.</p>

<p>And for the record, my seminar (not sure if it's being offered this year) was called "Designing Kids' Technologies." I played with LEGOs. It was glorious.</p>

4

<p>And I thought I was the only obessive one.... (made course plans for all the schools she applied to ><)</p>

<p>Actually course plans are useful because even if you cover everything atleast you have some idea what you want to do ....</p>

5

<p>Current students, are there any HASS-D classes we should know to avoid like the plague? I'm trying to decide now what to put down for the lottery.</p>

6

<p>depends too much on individual taste. if you hate pedantic jargon don't take philosophy, if you don't want to spend a huge amount of time on hass or doing hass-related work then don't take the intro visual arts courses, if you have never taken German-I don't take German-II, if you hate poetry... well, don't take poetry... etc.</p>

7

<p>too mean to philosophy. what strikes some as pedantic jargon seems to others like refreshing precision and clarity.</p>

<p>i completely agree that some people hate the style of modern analytic philosophy... but if someone had told me it was all pedantic jargon i probably wouldn't have taken it... and if i had taken it anyway, i would have wound up disagreeing. :-)</p>

8

<p>What are some HASS-D's you're thinking of taking? (Hamster, and anybody else, really.)</p>

9

<p>I'm wanting to do French 4 Language HASS-D option at some point in freshman yr, not sure if spring or fall yet, depends if I wanna break from french (which I might).
Also thinking about the Ancient Greek History HASS-D, looks interesting, but not sure...toying between that The Homer to Dante Western Culture one and Comparative Politics.</p>

10

<p>I'm intruiged by the Intro to Musical Composition HASS-D but I'm worried that I'd be in over my head. I took piano lessons for a number of years and played trumpet for 3 years in middle school so I can read music and stuff, but I've let myself get away from it (mostly to focus on more academic pursuits). Do you have to be proficient in an instrument? Anyone have experience with this class? I guess fall of freshman year would be the best time to try something like this, since it is P/NR after all...</p>

<p>Problems of Philosophy and The Ancient World: Greece are also near the top of my list.</p>

11

<p>I think through my freshman and sophomore year I want to to learn German or Chinese. Probably German. 21F.403 and .404 are HASS-D's, I believe.</p>

12

<p>Maybe French since I want to go to grad school and a fiction writing class. Maybe chinese my junior/senior year, depends on whats interesting</p>

13

<p>I'm going to be a Junior and I still haven't looked at the degree requirements .. :)</p>

14

<p>Anyone thinking of taking part in the F/ASIP (Freshman/Alumni Summer Internship Program)? <a href="http://web.mit.edu/fasip/www/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/fasip/www/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Any comments about the program, upperclassmen??</p>

15

<p>mm... I still don't know what I want to major in, lol. I haven't even looked at the course list and I just started considering which PE classes I wanted to take because I'm not a sporty person you know... lol</p>

16

<p>FASIP is a good program, they have connections that will help you get a decent internship after your freshman year. admissions are FIFO</p>

17

<p>River Phoenix-
Have you taken part in the program?? Is it very time-consuming??
And what do you mean by FIFO??</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

18

<p>No, No, and First come first serve</p>

19

<p>If I sign up for seminar-based advising, but get to campus and find that I do not have enough time for the seminar, can I switch to traditional advising? There are a number of seminars that I really would like to take, but I'm committed to pursuing extracurriculars. It's very hard to make this decision now when I do not have all of the information necessary to make an accurate appraisal of my schedule.
For instance, if I audition for a music group, I may not get in, and this will free up my schedule. I know that the performance groups sponsored by the music department can count for 6 units of credit, but I also know that you do not have to take them for credit. How feasable would it be to take a freshman seminar and participate in a performance group for no credit? Too time-consuming?</p>

20

<p>freshman seminars are generally like lunch parties. you'd have time for lunch parties, wouldn't you?</p>