Decisions. It’s that moment in the spring semester when time seems to speed up and every day, more and more decisions need to be made. Case in point: yesterday we were given our fall 2005 course catalogs. The pink covers, vibrantly enticing us to dream about the fall and the time when classes begin anew can be seen everywhere - on the dining hall tables in McEwen and Commons, on top of piles of papers on dorm room desks, and even in select bathrooms around campus to be used as light ‘reading material.’ Flipping through the catalog is always a pleasure. Even though well over seventy-five percent of the classes either don’t interest me or are unavailable to me because of prerequisites, it is the idea that in this one booklet, an infathomable amount knowledge can be learned through the simple act of picking courses.
Of course, even though I’m attending a liberal arts college and the only core requirements revolve around writing intensive classes and physical education requirements, I will be automatically selecting a couple of courses to continue my majors - the senior seminar in computer science and a 400 level economics class to use as a senior project (Financial Market Theory sounds quite interesting).
That leaves me, however, with two open slots. Do I take a history course? Or yet another comparative literature one? Or should I do something entirely new? At this point, I don’t know. I’ve looked through the course catalog and have come up with four different classes that definitely interest me in one way or another. They are in no particular order: CPLIT/HIST 207W Vietnam through Film, CPLIT/JAPN 239 Modern Life and War in Japanese Literature, EDUC 220 American Sign Language and Deaf Culture, and CPSCI 320 Computer Architecture. Each and everyone has their own pro’s and con’s. The computer architecture course is taught by my favorite professor at Hamilton (Prof. Bailey) and would be a lot of fun, but requires about 10 hours of work outside of class per week. The sign language course could be extremely interesting but might also be a lot of rote memorization. Finally, both comparative literature courses sound great, however, being literature based courses, there will be a lot of writing and reading that may interfere with my senior seminar.
At the same time, I’m also wondering whether I should be branching out in my final year. I’ve never taken a sociology course, nor anthropology, or even history. Granted, all but the computer science course could be counted as courses in departments I’ve never studied in, but I wonder if they are too close to my interests. I’m here at Hamilton to gain a broad, diverse education. So, should I be thinking more outside the box? I guess a lot of this will become clearer after I talk to my advisors but I’d be interested in hearing your opinion too - so feel free to post a comment or too.
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