<p>I really dislike the humanities, as well as the type of essay-writing that accompanies them, so I was planning on limiting my exposure to them and taking mainly science courses. However, I've read about how difficult it can be to be taking first year chem, bio and physics at the same time. Is this always how it is? Do most people take different electives to try and space out the harder science courses?</p>
<p>I don’t think the material would be overwhelming. First-year college sciences overlap quite a bit with high school sciences. </p>
<p>The biggest concern is time-management. For each course, you might spend 3 hours in class, 3 hours in lab, 2 hours for pre-/post-labs, and 3 hours on a problem set. That’s 10+ hours per course per week. Spending 40 hours a week on academics doesn’t sound too bad but requires a fair bit of time management. (Most of my classmates openly confess to spending less than 30 hours a week on schoolwork, many even say less than 20.)</p>
<p>It’s really up to you. I personally find humanities classes much more stressful than sciences, even though they usually come with a lighter workload.</p>
<p>I spaced out my intro science classes and they still seemed a bit hard. I haven’t had much trouble piling up all my upper division science classes, however. I agree that time management is really important. I’ve also found that since intro science classes are weeder classes a lot of the times, they’re harder than they really are.</p>
<p>Are you a freshman signing up for classes? I know plenty of people who did the general bio/chem route their first year, but all of them seemed very miserable and overworked. I’d personally recommend taking 2 sci courses max and getting any GE reqs out of the way if you’re a freshman. If you pick something that interests you (and as a scientist it’s not bad to be interested in non-science), the papers shouldn’t be -too- painful. It’s also a nice change of pace from science (even if you are in LOVE with science, multiple science classes can be exhausting).</p>
<p>In summary, I agree that it’s about time management, and it’s taken me quite a few years to get good at it, ha.</p>
<p>In my junior year I took 4 sciences and 1 math class, and it didn’t go well for me… I don’t know about freshmen year since the classes should be rather easy.</p>