Should I take three or four classes? Can I manage to get Fridays off?” Winter Quarter registration is upon us, and these are just a few of the questions that will cross students’ minds.
I begin this quarter’s CAESAR search as I have every quarter before – searching for easy science and math distros. When one of my friends once told me a few quarters ago about a class in the material science department I thought I had found a winner. I showed up the first day and realized quickly that everyone else in the room had the same idea that I had; they were not there to learn but just to get a distro out of the way as painlessly as possible.
Sure enough the class involved baking cake, exploding things, and playing with balloons.
But did I learn anything by setting off explosions? No. Did I retain anything for even a day after the final? No. I crammed before the final and completed the quarter pleased that I had one less distro to worry about.
The following quarter I took Lane Fenrich’s Gay and Lesbian History. I absorbed every word and did (nearly) all of the reading. At the end of this class I asked myself the same two questions: Did I learn anything? Tons. Did I retain anything after I turned in my final paper? A year after the class I can describe several of his lectures.
Was the difference between these two classes good teaching versus bad teaching? No, the material science professor did his best to be as engaging and interactive as possible. The difference boils down to one simple factor: one was a distro, the other was not.
If the deans think students enroll in “Rocks for Jocks” because they are hoping to spark a passion in geology, they’re kidding themselves.
Most students choose distros looking for an easy course; the cost of these mandatory courses is simply too great.
My “modern materials” class leaves me with one less opportunity to enroll in a class that could have the impact on me that Gay and Lesbian History did.
Imagine a NU where the only required classes are within students’ majors. Students now have the freedom to pick up a second major, a minor, or take a year of modern dance.
The choice is theirs.
The administration fears that all students would do with this freedom is take things they want to take – God forbid – and not challenge themselves in areas that are unfamiliar. But students all had the brains to get themselves into NU, they also have the intelligence to pick their classes.
They also know that graduate schools won’t look too kindly on a schedule with 45 credits in Communication Studies.
NU students are a naturally inquisitive bunch of people and given more freedom to choose their own academic destiny has the potential to yield greater returns than “Rocks for Jocks” ever could.
My quest for easy distros continues and I am a senior with two math and one science distro left to take.
Suggestions, anyone?
