<p>Like all the freshman at Brandeis I’m looking at courses to take for the first semester. My schedule is kind of looking like this:</p>
<p>UWS
Roman History
Greek Drama
Economics
Afro-American Studies
Fencing </p>
<p>Is this what a typical schedule should look like or am I taking too many fun courses and not enough hard courses? I want to take Medieval History but this course would only cancel out Economics and my schedule would look like this:</p>
<p>UWS
Fencing
Greek Drama
Medieval
Afro-American Studies </p>
<p>What do you guys think? Should I be adding more difficult classes first semester?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>There is a lot that will be going on in your first semester at Brandeis. Many things to get used to, and a lot of things to learn. While I encourage that you should sign up for 5 classes and go and see how you like them, realize that you are going to drop one of them. If you know you want to take the 2nd list of four classes, then go ahead and take the classes. (Fencing is a non-credit course and involves little other than you showing up, so I don’t count that as part of your four courses, but it’s another thing that will become too much if you’re taking 5 classes first semester). You will see that many other freshmen will go around saying they signed up for 5, and that they’re going to take all 5 (I did that, my friends did that) and they will almost all drop one class. Your classes look interesting, and mixed. Don’t worry if you’re taking the right classes 1st semester, like many students, you may see that once you get to Brandeis, what you thought you wanted to study may definitely change.</p>
<p>In terms of Schedule 1 v. Schedule 2: Medieval History sounds interesting, but remember that a lot of courses (not sure what you’re interested in!) have Economics as a prerequisite, so if you plan on taking any of those next semester it might be a good idea to gt Econ out of the way right now. Although, Medieval isn’t offered as often, so maybe you want to catch this course now and not have to wait a year or two. Totally a matter of preference.</p>
<p>In terms of the number of classes: It’s fine. Tons of people regularly take five classes each semester, and in my opinion it’s easier to do so in your first year before you’re the President of some organization or something. Most of my friends actually take 4.5-5.0 classes and sometimes PE; most of them only take 4.0 when they have a particularly difficult semester. None of your courses pops out as an “easy class” though, so you might find 5.0 to be overwhelming and know that there is absolutely no shame in taking a schedule of 4.0 difficult classes!</p>
<p>In terms of the specific courses you’ve chosen: It looks fun and well-balanced. Like Eliyahu said, don’t worry too much about taking “hard” classes - once you get into your major(s), you might regret not having taken classes just for fun. Note that UWS is a lot of work - and your others might require a lot of reading. So I definitely wouldn’t call this an easy schedule. Sign up for whatever courses you want - you can even show up at both Econ and Medieval during the first few days - and you can change your schedule as much as you want in the 10-day shopping period.</p>