schweblog

I just finished up with my undergraduate education and have come away with it feeling a little nonplussed. Looking back, I realize that I approached much of it with the wrong mindset. Even though I managed to graduate magna cum laude, I could have done a lot more to enrich my education by simply shifting my approach to school early on in a few, seemingly minor ways. It is in this spirit that I pass on this knowledge, in hopes that someone won’t make the same mistakes that I did.

It is worth noting that the following tips are written from the perspective of someone involved almost exclusively with the humanities (I was a philosophy major, history minor and branched out from there). Not all of the tips will be applicable to all degrees, your mileage may vary, etc.

1) College is not about getting a degree. I remember my high school guidance counselor explaining to a room full of soon-to-be-graduated seniors how to finish college within 4 years. People that approach college this way–as the shortest possible route to a piece of paper with your name on it–are missing the bigger picture. This is your one chance to dabble in a number of fields and see how you like them; things aren’t always trial and error with a 2-week window to drop a class if you’re not interested. In short, this is a great opportunity to find your passion and explore a number of avenues associated with it–it’s an opportunity too good to pass up because you just want to finish sooner rather than later.

2) 100- and 200-level classes are largely a waste of time. They are the appetizers of any given field: while they might provide a taste of what it’s like, you’re not going to get the “meat and potatoes” (i.e. a real feel) of what any given discipline is like in these classes. If I were to judge my major and minor based upon the experiences I had in my entry-level classes, I would be largely unimpressed. Upper-division courses are where you actually do something appropriate and relevant to the field. If you’re thinking about exploring other fields as possible majors/minors, take an upper-division course and figure out what it’s really like to do work in the discipline.

(It is also worth noting that, especially in larger universities, many departments try to get courses listed on the core curriculum. If a number of students are dropping the core classes or flunking them, the department may have their courses removed from the required curriculum, thus hurting their funding. As a result, many of these classes will be watered down to make them more tolerable to underclassmen expecting an easy ride.)

3) Get comfortable with theory and use it. This one is definitely appropriate only to the humanities, but if you can take some of your own time (summer break, winter break, etc.) and get comfortable with a theoretical framework, it can make your life exponentially easier–especially when you’re writing papers. Having some gender theory, Marxist theory, psychoanalytic theory, etc. to draw upon can make writing a thesis much easier. As an added bonus, becoming familiar with the process of discovering a single theoretical framework will make figuring others out much easier.

4) Talk to your professors. This one gets listed on a lot of advice columns for incoming freshmen, but it deserves repeating–especially if you’re an upperclassman and haven’t been reading many advice columns for freshman lately. Resolve to find a couple of professors each semester that you find interesting and worthwhile and take the time to visit their office hours or just walk with them back to their office after class each day. They’re intimately familiar with the student experience and can provide lots of great advice, as well as a letter of recommendation for jobs, grad school, internships, or other opportunities.

(Even without this out-of-class time, most professors will be willing to write you a letter of recommendation if you did well in the class, showed up most days, participated in discussion, etc.–still, in the words of one my favorite professors, “There’s a difference between a letter of recommendation–’This person would make a good candidate for your program’–and a strong letter of recommendation–’If you don’t choose this person for your program, you’re a fucking idiot.’” You’re probably not going to get a strong letter of recommendation without putting in some of your own time outside of class.)

5) You really don’t need to do the readings. This is the one piece of advice that will probably cause the most controversy, so let me clarify. If you attend class regularly, pay attention, and take notes, I’ve found that you can pass quite easily (and sometimes with an A, even) if you don’t do the reading. There are lots of caveats and risks here–the professor might intentionally test expecting for reading content to come out (some might even ask for specific examples from the text), your note-taking ability may not be very strong, etc. Proceed with extreme caution, but it’s good to keep this in mind if you need to blow off a class later on in the semester to focus on another where the readings are essential. (Although I admit to blowing off the readings for many a class simply because they bored me…I tried to make up for this by supplementing my own reading materials. Which were occasionally (usually) fiction.)