I’ve always been a very STEM focused person. However, my college requires me to take things like Art and Gender Studies as GE requirements. I can’t draw to save my life, and while I did play several instruments, I have no talent left in me. Also, while I do identify as an intersectional feminist, the school I am attending has a far left culture (I am a left leaning moderate), and I’m afraid that I’ll be pitted against everyone else in class discussions.
I’m aware I can’t get out of these requirements, but does anyone have any ideas on how to cope?
@bodangles I’ve always been one to bite my tongue 
Don’t worry haha. Unfortunately, I’m planning to place out of my foreign lang requirement (even though I have native proficiency, they still make me take a placement exam eye roll), so the requirements of Ethnic Studies, FGSS, and Art still stand.
What school? Usually, there is a long list of courses that fulfill each requirement.
@ucbalumnus Originally planned to go to Barnard, decided to go with Scripps instead. I took a look at all their art courses, and I don’t see a single one that I like 
http://catalog.scrippscollege.edu/content.php?catoid=3&navoid=105 shows Scripps’ general education requirements. These include a 3 course humanities core curriculum, a writing course, an art course, and a letters course. There are also other requirements like the race and ethnic studies and gender studies ones, though these look like they may overlap with other requirements. For the foreign language, it is reasonable for them to have you take a placement test to prove your native-level proficiency.
Does the art course have to be at Scripps? Ot can you take one of the other schools? I see computer graphics counts, that seems like it might work for you. Can you take any of the GEs as pass-fail?
@intparent It’s unclear, because they do have an ambiguous umbrella term “any other equivalent course.” I just don’t exactly know what that means.
Do “arts” mean fine arts explicitly? At my school, a number of literature courses fulfill our “arts” general ed requirement (along with more conventional painting/sketching/etc “art” classes.)
@preamble1776 Literature falls into “Letters” which is a separate GE requirement,
They for officially list computer graphics in the catalog as a option. I really wouldn’t worry about this. It is one class for one semester out of four years. Even the Mudders next door are taking quite a few non-STEM classes (I know because I have one); you really wouldn’t escape having a few GE classes anyplace you go in the US.
Part of the point of going to college or university is to become educated as a whole person, not just to gain some handy vocational skills. The expectation is that a graduate of Scripps or Mudd or Macalester or Barnard will represent the school well ten or twenty years down the road and not make people scratch their heads and think “good Lord, they gave her a degree?” So to that end, fine arts majors still have to take college algebra; and chem eng majors still need to know the difference between Richard Strauss and Levi Strauss.
In the words of my Introduction to Anthropology instructor: “it’ll make you a better person”.
I remember fulfilling arts/humanities requirements in college with stem adjacent courses like ‘History of Telecommunications’ and ‘Movie Special Effects’ and ‘Technical Proposal Writing’. The first one was easy but interesting, the second was a blast, and the third I continue to use to this day. You will have no shortage of similar amazing class options at the Claremont schools.
I took a gender studies class and it was very easy, I reckon you will be fine. I’d be surprised if the class wasn’t at least a small step down in rigor comparing to stem classes.